Security in Microsoft Azure: Understanding the Shared Responsibility Paradigm

We’ve been existing in the pandemic world for nearly a year and while many businesses survived, pivoted, and even prospered, over the past months, a large majority have struggled to adapt to new realities.

In this webinar, Matt Brickey, senior vice president of TierPoint professional services, chats with Brian Leimbach, CEO of CIO Advise about his experiences when working with organizations and their responses to the pandemic. In his role, Brian works with a variety of small and medium businesses to help them make strategic decisions by using digitally disruptive technologies.

In this session, they will:
- discuss commonalities Brian has seen in both successful and failed responses,
- how organizations are starting to restart business once the work-from-home challenges are settled, and
- the role of the CIO, CTO, and IT as integral change agents in the new normal.

Businesses are adopting cloud computing solutions at a staggering rate with most leveraging more than one cloud platform, often including public, private, or hybrid cloud configurations. While many IT professionals are wired for do-it-yourself projects, building your own cloud is not a task that should be taken lightly. Rapidly changing customer demands and technologies have created a constant state of flux for IT teams. Additionally, competing interests are often blocking the path to success. It can be a real struggle to balance routine maintenance and continuity of cloud infrastructure with important projects centered around strategic improvement projects.

Join TierPoint and Nutanix for a webinar to discuss the key factors to consider when evaluating your cloud strategy. We’ll address these questions:
•Why are business outcomes fundamental to successful cloud projects?
•Even if you have the skills available to build your own cloud is it something you should do?
•How can service providers be that competitive edge for your organization?
•Practice leadership insights to leverage TierPoint Hosted Private Cloud to delight your customers and deliver success for your business

As 5G networks roll out in 2020, many organizations are intrigued by the opportunities they enable for  AI, automation and IoT. The sheer number of devices able to connect to 5G networks in combination with a software-defined architecture creates more potential entry point and paths that can be exploited by bad actors. Join Paul Mazzucco, Chief Security Officer at TierPoint, to learn about 5G network vulnerabilities and how the current generation of bot may threaten the rise of 5G.

Learn how to master multi-cloud and power your modern architecture.

The worldwide public cloud services market is forecast to grow 17% in 2020 to total $266.4 billion, up from $227.8 billion in 2019, according to Gartner, Inc. Research from Flexera tells us that 84 percent of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy, with respondents to the Flexera research running applications in a combination of 3.4 public and private clouds and experimenting with 1.5 more for a total of 4.9 clouds.

Join this panel where industry experts will discuss:

- Aligning your multi cloud strategy to your organizational strategy
- Determining internal cloud competency to enable your organization to deploy multi cloud environments
- Designing complexity into your strategy
- Factoring in appropriate security to the equation
- Creating a blueprint to determine which workloads belong in which cloud
- Controlling scope and growth

Moderator:
Jo Peterson, Vice President, Cloud & Security Services, Clarify360

Panelists:
Álvaro González, AVP of Partner Strategy and Enablement, TierPoint
Matt Wallace, CTO, Faction

Downtime is a dirty word. When applications and data are inaccessible, employees can’t do their jobs, transactions don’t go through, and business revenue comes to a halt. Beyond lost revenue, the costs of downtime are incurred in many ways including regulatory penalties and legal expenses. Other intangible costs can include loss of customer goodwill and damage to company reputation. It’s troubling that business leaders are becoming less confident in their abilities to recover from a disaster.

Almost one in five (18%) said they “had concerns” about or were “not confident at all” in their disaster recovery plan. Cloud-based disaster recovery is among the fastest-growing cloud services, and DRaaS enables recovery of your data, applications, and infrastructure – all within minutes. You can achieve more control over your recovery plan, replication, and failover and confidence that your data and applications are protected.

Join TierPoint and VMware to learn about how TierPoint’s customized cloud-to-cloud recovery solutions powered by VMware’s vCloud Availability protect your virtualized workloads and offer a variety of configurations with failover to private and multitenant clouds. The TierPoint recovery team can create a DR solution for your VMware environments that reduces complexity, minimizes data loss and downtime, and fits your unique requirements and budget.

Speakers: Dale Levesque, Director – Product Management, TierPoint Guy Bartram, Director, Product Marketing, VMware

Dale Levesque is a Director of Product Management at TierPoint and is responsible for the development of various cloud and managed services, including storage, backup, and DRaaS. Guy Bartram is a Director of Product Marketing at VMware. He is a customer-centric and results-driven leader with expertise in helping cloud providers implement innovative solutions.

Forrester’s recently released report Predictions 2020: Cloud Computing, outlines five predictions that will shape the cloud landscape in the coming year.

According to the report, enterprises are just now starting to use cloud to modernize core business apps and processes; to date, they've been using cloud primarily to build new apps and rehost infrastructure. In our view, this movement is well underway and in 2020, drivers like security, cloud-native innovations and new alliances among key hyperscale players will reshape how providers deliver solutions to help enterprises digitally transform.

Join us for a webinar to discuss these predictions with featured speaker, Forrester Analyst, Abhijit Sunil and TierPoint Director of Product Management, Dave McKenney. In this session you’ll learn more about:
 What’s next in the cloud technology landscape, including public cloud
insights
 The increasing importance of security in cloud management
 How organizations are rethinking their data and edge strategies
 The growth of hyperconverged infrastructure across new use cases

What three trends will we see in 2020 for Disaster Recovery and backup? TierPoint’s Director of Product Management, Dale Levesque, shares his thoughts in this < 3-minute video.

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions combine compute, networking, and storage resources into a single system that enables the efficiency and agility that IT organizations crave. Early on, midsize companies successfully deployed HCI solutions on remote office/branch office (ROBO) environments and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) initiatives. These systems allowed IT organizations to both reduce complexity and expense.

The analysts at IDC expect the HCI market to grow more than 26% year over year for the next five years and the benefits are clear. So, what’s next? Service providers (and end-users) are seeking solutions to help innovate and differentiate. HCI vendors are shifting to a new wave of solutions in order to tackle challenges around artificial intelligence (AI), hybrid cloud deployments and edge computing. Join us for a discussion focused on this new wave of HCI including:
• How organizations’ expectations have changed - an understanding of what people want out of their clouds
• The new features/tools organizations can use to innovate and differentiate themselves
• A view into the roadmap to enable this new wave, created by leading technology vendor Dell EMC

Our panelists for this session include Mike Piccininni, senior manager, Americas Global Alliances with Dell EMC and Ryle Edwards, inside solutions engineer at SHI. Mike leads the Global Alliances sales teams to co-develop industry-leading service offerings built on Dell Technologies solutions; Ryle has an extensive solutions engineering background and has spent the past four years helping customers evaluate traditional, converged and hyperconverged platforms. Dave McKenney, director of product management at TierPoint will moderate the session. Dave oversees the strategy, product rollout and technical direction of all TierPoint’s cloud solutions.

As hybrid IT environments become the new normal, IT leaders must change their approach to designing and delivering enterprise-wide DRaaS solutions. Disaster recovery solutions must now align with the transformation of production environments to interconnect services, various cloud providers, and IoT, all while securing business-critical data from increasing cyberthreats. For IBM POWER and complex mainframe computing and cloud environments, traditional disaster recovery strategies may not be enough to support today’s business recovery objectives. DR testing the most critical applications once or twice per year is potentially insufficient and has created challenges for IT organizations to demonstrate their ability to meet RTOs and RPOs and have the confidence to invoke their DR plan should an outage occur. Join us for a discussion focused on how a change in thinking about DRaaS solutions can yield unprecedented business resumption capabilities including how to:

• Overcome challenges associated with hot sites and bare metal restores
• Benefit from an automated, always-on recovery system
• Avoid hassles and problems when testing your recovery systems
• Make hybrid a reality with industry-leading partners in IBM and x86 recovery

The session will be led by Orry Dubois, Chief Technology Officer at ZPX Cloud. Orry is a 30-year veteran in the disaster recovery (DR) industry and has held various management and leadership roles with multiple DR service providers including Sungard and IBM. PJ Farmer, Director of Product Management at TierPoint, will help review some case studies to understand how this new way of thinking solved our shared clients’ business problems and drove real results.

Today’s mobile workforce accesses data from a variety of devices and cloud applications, opening the door for cyber criminals to use compromised identities to damage your organization. IT security teams must now face the reality of being able to protect users and devices anywhere. Shifting focus from traditional security boundaries, the rapid adoption of cloud applications and BYOD has made identity the new perimeter. Solutions like Microsoft’s Office 365 with Enterprise Mobility + Security offer an expansive portfolio of security services to centralize and manage access and identities. Join us for a discussion focused on the core tools and best practices to help protect your users and your business, including how to:
- Protect access to devices and applications with Azure Active Directory
- Manage company-owned and bring your own (BYO) devices with Intune
- Provide extra security with multi-factor authentication
- Gain visibility into your cloud apps and services with Cloud Application Security

The session will be led by Matt Tabor, Director of Product Management at TierPoint. Matt has 20 years of experience working with cloud and managed services organizations in various management, consulting, and engineering roles. He currently provides strategic direction around TierPoint’s Managed Services and Cloud Platform including a managed security offering for Office 365 using Enterprise Mobility and Security services from Microsoft.

BraveIT is an interactive, thought leadership event designed for the modern IT professional happening on 9.19.19 in New York City aboard the Intrepid Seam Air & Space Museum. This livestream features two of our mainstage sessions:

*INSPECTION! The 2020 Security & Compliance Audit*

The Internet of Things (IoT), edge computing, 5G network deployments, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, software-defined networking (SDN), public clouds, hybrid infrastructure - what do all of these have in common? They are all experiencing explosive growth. Businesses will benefit from growth in these areas, but with more opportunities come new compliance and cybersecurity challenges. IT decision-makers will need to evolve at a pace matching these new opportunities (and risks). It’s easier said than done, though. How do you keep up with day-to-day IT operations while accounting for new advancements in technology and new trends?

TierPoint’s Chief Security Officer and Certified Ethical Hacker, Paul Mazzucco, leads a discussion with Forrester Analyst, Renee Murphy, to understand the latest strategies and tactics surrounding cybersecurity and IT compliance.

*With a Little Help from My Friends: IT Leaders Trade Stories & Secrets*

A large percentage of businesses – small and large – are undergoing some form of digital transformation, essential for them to stay competitive. But digital transformation may mean something different depending on the type of businesses and industry. Some prioritize their IT transformation efforts to make their IT organization more efficient and positioned for revenue generation.

Microsoft leads a discussion with a panel of IT leaders who have stories to tell about their current digital & IT transformation efforts (security, cloud migration, disaster recovery, budgets and human resources). Panelists include: Clearsense, Connection, Christian Broadcast Network, and New York City Department of Environmental Protection.

BraveIT is an interactive, thought leadership event designed for the modern IT professional happening on 9.19.19 in New York City aboard the Intrepid Seam Air & Space Museum. This livestream features two of our mainstage sessions:

*What 5G Really Means for IT*
For customers, 5G will mean faster speed and better coverage. For carriers, it means more customers and more towers. For IT, it means something else. There may be some not-so-immediately-obvious impacts from the new technology, like heavier loads on your applications and infrastructure due to the easier access to faster speeds, new sources of data (like IoT, Machine Learning and AI), and ensuring you have the right talent to handle the changes. In this session, we join IT experts in a discussion on the implications and solutions to adapting to the new networking technology.

Moderated by TierPoint CRO Tony Rossabi, the panel will feature LiveNation SVP Network, Gabriel Sassoon; PCCW Global CEO, Marc Halbfinger; CenturyLink, SVP, Core Network & Technology Solutions, Paul Savill; and IBM Cloud Global Offering Executive, Gabriel Montanti.

*Battle Royale: Hyperscale vs. Hyperconverged*
Hyperscale (a.k.a., public) clouds have been all the rage. But as more businesses look to the cloud for their data and applications, they’re asking some tough questions: “Is public cloud more economical than private cloud in all cases? Which type of cloud best addresses my company’s unique needs? How does hyperconverged infrastructure change the equation? Are we properly staffed to manage any of the options?” Industry experts and IT leaders will tackle these and similar questions, to help you make the best decision for your business.

Moderated by TierPoint President & CFO Mary Meduski the panel will feature Compass Datacenters Founder & CEO Chris Crosby; Nutanix COO, David Sangster; Goldman Sachs Managing Director, Technology, Media and Telecom, Jason Tofsky; Cowen’s Colby Synesael; and Upstack Chief Strategy Officer, Jeff August

Organization under attack. Users locked out. Systems taken offline. Data at risk.
Ransomware attacks continue to make headlines and impact organizations of all types and sizes. A recent study found that business detections of ransomware attacks have skyrocketed 235 percent since early 2018. With this dramatic increase in attacks, it seems like a good time to talk to our resident security expert about ransomware. Why are these attacks increasing? Despite the visibility, risks, and costs of attacks, how are so many organizations still vulnerable? What can you do to defend your data from this threat? In this webinar, you’ll learn more about this hacker fan favorite including:
- Ransomware fundamentals – what is it and how does it work?
- Ransomware in the news.
- How to prevent ransomware.
- How to recover from ransomware attacks.

Key takeaways from this session include:
• What is trending in software-defined networking
• What are simple network tools that allow you to manage high traffic needs
• How to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your interconnects from your
TierPoint data center
• How to increase your network security and performance and remove friction for end
users to set up dedicated connections
• How to implement solutions for on-demand network redundancy
• How to improve SaaS performance for end users with your network design
• How to reduce latency between SaaS, clouds, your other sites and end users
• What are dedicated cloud connectivity options

Cloud migration – to your first cloud, from one cloud to another, or to more cloud instances – can be incredibly complex. Beginning with assessments and sizing, to the move itself and then ultimately developing and leveraging a post-migration strategy, it’s critical that each element is carefully planned to ensure the availability of applications and to minimize the impact to productivity. In this webinar, you’ll see how the expertise of a cloud services provider like TierPoint, in combination with Zerto’s replication technologies ensures continuous data protection, non-disruptive testing, and support for diverse environments during a cloud migration.

Analyst firm Gartner predicts that by 2022, more than 50% of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed outside of the data center or cloud, up from less than 10% in 2019.

As a result, businesses are increasingly leveraging both hyperscale data centers and cloud deployments closer to the edge to support their IT strategies and digital transformation initiatives.

Rapid growth in multicloud IT deployments is driving an increased need to consider options for connectivity. Dedicated, fast, and globally-reaching connectivity is key to bringing the cloud closer to the edge where businesses reside and need services.

Join TierPoint and Megaport for an in-depth look at two multicloud use cases. Our experts will give their insights into how the demand for both hyperscale and edge computing can be combined with cloud connectivity to make cloud strategies a reality.

More organizations are adopting a hybrid approach to IT and are seeking a partner to help integrate both outsourced and in-house IT services, ideally managed through a single interface.

Designed to meet the needs of our customers, the TierPoint Portal is a streamlined console that provides a comprehensive user-friendly dashboard of critical information immediately upon logging in.

From data center and managed services performance dashboards to trouble ticketing support, the TierPoint Portal is your dependable, always-on visibility tool to help manage your TierPoint IT infrastructure environment.

Join us to learn how the TierPoint Portal makes it easy to view, protect and access management tools for all facets of your environment.

TierPoint’s Chief Security Officer, Paul Mazzucco, is an expert in the field of human behavior and cybersecurity, and in this presentation, Mr. Mazzucco examines the natural human tendency to fear the unknown and how this has consequences on today’s IT leaders, namely for the data and people they attempt to protect. Mr. Mazzucco will also highlight how attackers leverage these psychological vulnerabilities for attacks in Phishing, Internet of Things (IoT), and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Attendees will learn about the latest tactics attackers are using to exploit cybersecurity efforts, and they will also understand how to address the tension between the unknown of what an attacker is capable of doing versus what an IT leader can proactively do to avoid organizational complacency and security vulnerabilities.

In addition to Paul’s security duties at TierPoint, Paul Mazzucco is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE), and Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) answering to the FBI, the United States Secret Service, Pennsylvania Electronic Crimes Task Force (PAECT) and the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (U.S. CERT).

The benefits of turning to the cloud are numerous; scalability, control, flexibility, and power to name a few. While transitioning to the cloud has many strong points, there are still the challenges of data and application protection. In this webinar, you’ll learn:
• How to leverage multi-cloud as an addition to your traditional data center
• What applications and services require the most protection in hybrid mode—and how to protect them
• The importance of portability and how to avoid lock-in
• How to get better compliance and data protection by moving data between on-prem and the cloud.