Security in Microsoft Azure: Understanding the Shared Responsibility Paradigm

As reported in Forbes last year, 73% of companies are planning to move to a fully software-defined data center within two years.

A software-defined data center is based on a virtualized environment of compute, storage, networking and security in conjunction with policy-based management and automation. The evolution from a traditional data center architecture to one that is software-defined can take months if not years but can yield immense benefits for the business.

Join us for a discussion on the progress toward the fully software-defined data center, including benefits of infrastructure as code and overcoming challenges associated with traditional workflows.

As businesses embark on IT transformation initiatives, they must ensure their cloud connectivity is secure, reliable and high performing. Low latency from the data center to the edge is crucial. With the rapid growth in IT deployments leveraging public cloud services as well as legacy systems and hosted private clouds, direct cloud connectivity is a key success factor for hybrid and multi-cloud strategies.

Join TierPoint’s Dominic Romeo and Zayo’s Christopher Smith, for a discussion on cloud connectivity to learn how these solutions can effectively and efficiently bring public cloud capabilities to the edge.

TierPoint's Paul Mazzucco will discuss the double-edged sword of artificial intelligence, which is aiding the efforts of hackers and protectors alike. Join us as we explore the world of the Darknet, how bad actors are using machine learning and AI to create better attack vectors, and how IT professionals are also using these tools to defend their vital infrastructure. Powered by behavioral modeling, these technologies are the next frontiers in attack mitigation.

Digital transformation doesn’t happen overnight. Whatever your strategy, you’ve likely had to research, assess, trial, or even migrate workloads to a public cloud.

Platforms like Microsoft Azure offer an expansive portfolio of solutions but also create many opportunities for quick wins in the traditional IaaS space and, for many, are a step in the journey to transform the legacy enterprise.

Join us for a discussion focused on the core set of services needed to build out a virtual private cloud in Azure, addressing many of the decision points that professionals are confronted with during this process. Additionally, we will review several PaaS offerings that might complement your IaaS environment.

With the ever-changing cyber threat landscape, you need to be sure the security measures you put in place are performing as expected.

There were over 53,000 reported security breaches with 2,216 confirmed data breaches reported in the 2018 Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report. IT executives consider network security a critical priority, but they also want to reduce the complexity associated with supporting an array of disparate security products.

Enter the next generation firewall. Join our panel of experts for a discussion on:
- best practices around next-generation firewall deployments
- to learn more about the state of the firewall market, threat detection capabilities, and reputation protection, and
- how the right partner can help strengthen your security posture.

BraveIT is an interactive, thought leadership event designed for the modern IT professional who is tasked with navigating opportunity and risk in a mission-critical world. The live event is taking place in Chicago on 9/13, we hope you'll join us for the live stream if you are unable to attend in person.

In this era of accelerating opportunity and risk, IT decision-making evolves constantly. And while the propagation of possibilities fuels innovation and growth, it also makes it increasingly difficult to keep pace; to continuously optimize mission-critical strategies in the face of new threats and persistent change. Although your master plan may be established and stable, you know it can’t be static. Fine tuning it regularly is a required exercise in business optimization, product differentiation, and risk mitigation. That’s why BraveIT is an essential part of your yearly planning cycle. It keeps you current with industry best practices and best-in-class implementations, pressure tests your operating assumptions and enriches your plans for a broad range of potential events and opportunities—all while connecting you with peers and partners who are facing similar challenges.

As IT professionals face daunting challenges to combat the likes of hackers and shrinking budgets, we recognize your heroics in changing the dialogue from “no” to “how.”

All times are CDT:
- 12:30 PM: Opening Remarks
- 12:45 PM: It's a Brave New BC/DR World
- 1:25 PM: Workshop: What Organizations Need to Know to Achieve True IT Resilience
- 2:20 PM: What IT Nightmares Keep You Up at Night? Peer Perspectives on Real-World BC/DR
- 3:10 PM: Bravery in the Midst of Digital Transformation: Success Stories
- 4:10 PM: Data Center of the Future
- 4:40 PM: BraveIT Award presentation

Visit https://web.tierpoint.com/braveit/2018-agenda for full details.

IT leaders and their teams are under great pressure to keep pace with escalating and often conflicting business demands, putting them in a state of perpetual transformation.  As traditional solutions are replaced by more agile but also more complex models, even the strongest teams are challenged to design the right mix of workloads, environments, and security measures. This session will review the shifting IT landscape, the factors contributing to digital transformation, and the opportunities created for today’s IT professionals.  

The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, a TierPoint client, is the world’s largest not-for-profit plant science research institute, with a mission of improving the human condition and helping the planet feed a growing population. IT Director Vince Abernathy discusses his team’s role in supporting the Center’s mission, how they select vendors, and why they chose TierPoint for disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS).

Business disruptions are not just inconvenient but can significantly damage a company’s reputation and bottom line. Many businesses are turning to Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) solutions as they have effectively solved for downtime and data loss due to weather, system failures and human error. Moreover, DRaaS solutions are effective against cyber threats. Indeed, it’s not just the weather we should be worried about when it comes to disasters.

One of the fastest growing types of attacks in recent years is ransomware. When infected, files and data are locked down and held hostage until a ransom is paid to the anonymous attacker. Due to the nature of DRaaS solutions, your organization is protected against ransomware thanks to available, continuous copies (or snapshots) of your data as well as processes to help fail back to regular operations.

In this session, David Hines, Vice President of Architecture and Engineering at TierPoint will review the latest in ransomware tactics, and how to best prevent malware from entering the network in the first place. Sometimes, however, this is unavoidable and having a plan to mitigate the damage is a necessity.

Register Today!

You're hearing all about "digital transformation," but is it real? What does your business really need to compete? As IT leaders, digital transformation puts more pressure on your cloud strategy – expectations to achieve more, faster. Is the public cloud the answer to all your needs? How could a hosted private cloud help advance your cloud strategy? Is your hybrid cloud implementation falling short of expectations?

Join Frost & Sullivan, TierPoint, and VMware for straight talk about digital transformation. We will discuss the challenges and opportunities of the digital era, and offer tips on how your business can succeed.

Digital transformation initiatives such as business intelligence/analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and big data are top priorities for IT organizations in 2018. Toward that end, according to a recent 451 Research survey, a full 60% of more than 1,000 IT leaders surveyed report that they plan to run the majority of their IT off-premises by year-end 2019, including public cloud and SaaS.

At the same time, a number of organizational, cultural, and technology challenges have kept almost two-thirds of IT executives from developing formal digital transformation strategies.

What is the path forward? What does the off-premise landscape look like? What are the key elements of a successful strategy?

Melanie Posey, research vice president and general manager, Voice of the Enterprise at 451 Research will delve into the data and strategies IT organizations are implementing to facilitate this strategic shift and arrive at the point where they can focus on helping differentiate their business, rather than merely keeping the lights on.

From AI and Machine Learning to the human factor, new cybersecurity threats and the tools used to fight them are evolving at a pace never before seen. Join our panel of cybersecurity experts as they discuss the evolving cybersecurity landscape and answer questions ranging from the latest cybersecurity trends to incident response and data breach legal requirements. Panelists will include:

• Jennifer Rathburn, Partner, Foley and Lardner, LLP Law Firm
• Paul Mazzucco, Chief Security Officer, TierPoint
• Scott Lambert, VP ActiveIntelligence, Alert Logic

Every day, we hear about Artificial Intelligence (AI) invading more and more of everything around us. Within Information Security, we cannot get around new algorithms, new machine learning techniques, and a rush to automate everything. However, have these new technologies paradoxically ushered in a completely new world of vulnerabilities?

In this webinar for technical and non-technical business leaders, Carl Herberger, Radware’s Vice President of Global Security Solutions, explores a fascinating topic of how everything from APIs to people are being attacked in a new, hidden attack surface with a unique ability to cloak and anonymize its designers, and which has incredible speed and efficiency in its attack types. This presentation will highlight how each step towards deeper and total connectivity comes with consequences of needing to protect the very automation designed to make our world easy. In this session, you will learn how everything from humans to bots have weak undersides to automation and even AI interfaces can be duped into attacks.

A frequent guest of Fox Business News, CNN, CBS Evening News, CNBC and Bloomberg Broadcast News, along with numerous NYT, WSJ and Washington Post citations, Herberger will share his insights and answer your questions about this important topic.

About the speaker:
Mr. Herberger is considered a foremost expert on the problems and solutions surrounding cyber attacks. In his role at Radware, he is responsible for developing, managing, and increasing the company's security practice, and serves as the primary corporate spokesperson in the Americas for security-related topics.

Previously, Herberger held senior security leadership positions at Evolve IP, Barclaycard, and a top-five IT security consulting organization; he co-founded Allied InfoSecurity, Inc.—an international provider of best-in-class security consulting and technical compliance services; and served at the Pentagon.

As today’s businesses come under attack from increasingly malicious cyber threats, a traditional “defense in depth” strategy may become insufficient to effectively fend off attackers and prevent business disruptions and downtime. As mobility, IoT, and BYOD open new attack vectors and attacks become more sophisticated, the situation only worsens. While 100% prevention is impossible, rapid identification and containment is not.


In this live webinar, TierPoint Director of Security Product Management, Brian Anderson will discuss why we need to redefine defense in depth approaches to safeguard data from emerging threats.


Join Brian as he shares insight into the following key considerations when developing a better, more comprehensive security strategy:

• The implications of the disappearing network edge.
• Why a traditional “defense in depth” approach, while still a good start, is no longer sufficient
• Keys to rapid identification and containment
• How visibility, detection, escalation, and automated response help close the loop



Business disruptions and downtime can cause serious damage to a company's bottom line. And today, with multiple potential sources of disruption — from equipment failure to natural disasters and cyber-attacks — IT leaders are seeking even faster and more resilient disaster recovery (DR) strategies.

As the tools to implement DR plans become more sophisticated, the options for leveraging public cloud infrastructure for backup, replication, and recovery have increased. Microsoft Azure Site Recovery helps ensure business continuity by enabling replication for Azure VMs and on-premises virtual machines and physical servers.

Join us for a discussion around the latest trends in DRaaS, and how organizations are leveraging Microsoft Azure Site Recovery (ASR) to ensure data is safe and available.

About the Speakers:
Justin Jakowski is an Azure Cloud Infrastructure Solutions Professional on Microsoft’s Global Blackbelt team. He analyzes customer technical requirements and provides options and recommendations around Azure Cloud Infrastructure workloads such as Site Recovery, Backup, Open Source, ExpressRoute and Networking. He has more than 15 years of experience in the IT industry with various roles in management, engineering, pre-sales and consulting.

Dale Levesque is responsible for the development of various cloud and managed services, including storage, backup, and DRaaS, for TierPoint. Prior to TierPoint, Dale served in a number of strategic technology roles, including the deployment of international fixed broadband wireless infrastructure and management of global software development teams in the enterprise virtualization space. Mr. Levesque also served in the United States Navy, supporting Operation Desert Storm.

Companies are re-thinking their cloud adoption strategy. How does your organization compare? In a dynamic cloud marketplace, having access to the very latest data and expert insights not only can save considerable time and effort in planning cloud migrations, but also create the opportunity for competitive advantage.

TierPoint is pleased to present an exclusive briefing with 451 Research. Melanie Posey, Research Vice President will share the results of newly commissioned research, providing valuable perspective for organizations planning and designing workload migrations to the cloud. Available only to webinar attendees, this vendor agnostic presentation will answer the following key questions:
•What are your peers spending on cloud services?
•What workloads are your peers porting, when, and how?
•What are some of the challenges and inhibitors for various cloud strategies?
•What ROI are your peers are seeing?

About Melanie:
Melanie Posey is the Research Vice President for 451 Research’s Voice of the Enterprise: Cloud Transformation offering. She focuses on tracking, analyzing and anticipating the pace and nature of enterprise cloud adoption.

Prior to joining 451 Research, Melanie spent more than 15 years at IDC in a variety of roles, providing analysis, forecasting and insight for the cloud, hosting, datacenter, managed services and telecommunications markets. At IDC, Melanie received numerous awards for research, collaboration, sales support and client service, including being named runner-up for the prestigious James Peacock Memorial Award.

During her more than 20-year career in the technology research and consulting arena, Melanie has been quoted extensively in the business and technology trade press, and is a frequent speaker at industry and client events.

Join our “Web App Security” presentation, which provides the audience with a global perspective of the current state of web application vulnerabilities. Attendees will:
• gain a better understanding of how reconnaissance is used by attackers to discover and pinpoint systems to compromise,
• learn about attack methodologies and how vulnerable web apps can be leveraged for attackers to gain privileged access, and
• hear remediation strategies to help protect their web apps from being attacked.

Speaker Information:
Paul Fletcher has over 20 years of experience in information technology and security. Prior to joining Alert Logic, Fletcher advised executive level leadership in the energy, retail, and financial sectors regarding emerging security threats and mitigation strategies. Additionally, he has worked with Fortune 50 organizations, the Department of Defense, and critical infrastructure organizations to implement risk management plans and security solution designs. His other specialties include network security, customer data integrity, application security, forensics investigation, threat intelligence, and incident response. Fletcher holds a Master of Arts and Bachelor of Science degree and is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).

Business disruptions and downtime can cause serious damage to a company's bottom line. And today, with multiple potential sources of disruption — from equipment failure to natural disasters and cyber-attacks — IT leaders are seeking even faster and more resilient disaster recovery (DR) strategies. Identifying risks and developing a DR plan are essential, but just as important is selecting the right vendor for your Disaster Recovery needs, which can be challenging.

In this live webinar, TierPoint Manager of Product Development, Dale Levesque and Zerto Technology Evangelist, Harry Smith will discuss the keys to effective DR planning and address the added challenges presented by increasingly complex hybrid IT environments.

Join Dale and Harry as they share use cases and answer key questions about creating an effective DR plan and selecting the best provider for your needs, including:

• What are the major causes of downtime?
• How has DR evolved from backup computer centers to cloud computing and advanced data replication technologies?
• What are the latest DRaaS trends?
• What are the key considerations when selecting a DR solutions provider?

Migrating to the cloud can transform an organization. But is your organization ready? It can be a struggle to translate buzz words into a successful paradigm shift from a legacy server/data center model to purchasing in a cloud broker model. And, if your move is not properly planned and effectively executed, your cloud initiative may result in unexpected cost overruns, or worse. A successful roadmap is not just about planning and migration, it’s also about aligning your organization to most effectively use the cloud.

In this live webinar, TierPoint Vice President of Professional Services, Matt Brickey and Dell EMC’s Director of Data Mobility, Peter Molnar, will share their combined expertise, including client use cases, derived in helping hundreds of clients “cloudify” their applications and data, and leverage the cloud to full advantage.

Join Matt and Peter as they answer key questions about creating a successful cloud roadmap, including:
- How to assess your organization’s cloud readiness
- How to evaluate which workloads are the best candidates for the cloud
- In a multi-cloud world, which cloud(s) are right for your organization?
- Crucial migration planning considerations and milestones