156: The Cloud Pod Takes Back Everything It Said About Windows vs Linux Security

On The Cloud Pod this week, the team reminisces about dealing with awful database technologies, which Ryan luckily managed to avoid. Plus all things cybersecurity as Linux gets hit with a huge security emergency, Google acquires Mandiant for $5.4 billion, and Orca Security catches a major Azure cross-tenant vulnerability. 

A big thanks to this week’s sponsor, Foghorn Consulting, which provides full-stack cloud solutions with a focus on strategy, planning and execution for enterprises seeking to take advantage of the transformative capabilities of AWS, Google Cloud and Azure.

• Linux is on the backfoot as it’s hit by the most severe vulnerability in years.
• Google has acquired the cybersecurity giant Mandiant for a cool $5.4 billion.
• Orca Security catches a huge Azure cross-tenant vulnerability.

Top Quotes  

• ”But is Mandiant now going to be suddenly finding the vulnerabilities and publishing the vulnerabilities that they’re finding in Azure and AWS, and happen to maybe not mention the ones externally that are happening in GCP? They’re no longer an independent third party.”
• “Even with these things happening, you’re still safer running in the cloud. Even though there are outages, you’re still more highly available in the cloud. I hate to see these things in the news.”

• Knative is now officially a CNCF incubating project — any competitors in the market?
• As Linux is bitten by its most high-severity vulnerability in years, we take back everything we said about Windows vs Linux security.

• ️ Faster failover is the name of the game with AWS this week: its RDS for MySQL & PostgreSQL Multi-AZ deployment option comes with improved write performance. Jonathan is also very, very excited about their JDBC driver for MySQL.
• AWS customers can now request their CyberGRX report for due diligence on third-party suppliers. But who watches the watchmen? 
• ⏱️ Ryan’s always suffered from slow performance, but now he can now get specific about how his bad code is affecting it, thanks to Amazon DevOps Guru’s extended support for Lambda with CodeGuru Profiler integration.

• Google pays $5.4 billion in hush money to Mandiant in a move that’s sure to massively boost their credibility in the cybersecurity arms race. Mandiant’s biggest customer? GCP itself.
• You can now leverage OpenTelemetry to democratize Cloud Spanner observability — which of course they want everyone using.

• ⛈️ Microsoft’s new security chief says it’s time to take shelter in the cloud. Between this and Mandiant, is Amazon missing out here?
• Orca Security is back on the hunt as it catches a catches a massive Azure cross-tenant vulnerability.
• Azure introduces dynamic lineage extraction from Azure SQL Databases in Purview, whatever this means. Luckily, Jonathan is here to decipher it for us (and if the Microsoft PR department is listening, he’s ready to accept consulting requests).

• Oracle provides its top reasons why a multicloud improves performance, but they’re short on the data to back up this claim — it’s also not clear which customers they asked. Was it, by any chance, Oracle’s own customers?

⚡ Justin charges ahead once again and Peter’s (sadly) still lagging, making the scores Justin (3), Ryan (1), Jonathan (1), Peter (0).

• SOC reports now available in Spanish 
• Generally available: Azure Chaos Studio Key Vault and Classic Cloud Services faults
• Public preview: Schedule automated emails of your saved cost views  
• Amazon Genomics CLI adds the Snakemake workflow management system 
• Amazon Kendra adds spell checker for queries 
• You can now choose from two different compression options on Amazon FSx for OpenZFS
• Zscaler, Okta, CrowdStrike seek to combat zero trust ‘confusion’  

• AWS Summits – US – April-October, APAC – May, EMEA – April-June
• SQL Server & Azure SQL Conference – April 5-7th
• Google Cloud Summit Series (Updated Regularly) – Data Cloud Summit – April 6th
• IBM Think – May 9th-13th
• DevOps Enterprise Summit Virtual – Europe – May 10th-12th |  Registration Open  |  CFP Open
• Kubecon EU – May 16th-20th
• Google Next – June 6th-8th
• RSA Conference – June 6-9th
• AWS Reinforce – June 28th-29th
• DevOps Enterprise Summit Virtual – US – August 2nd-4th
• Blackhat USA – August 6th-11th
• VMWorld – US – August 29th-September 1st
• DevOps Enterprise Summit US Flagship Event The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas – October 18th-20th
• Kubecon US – October 24-28th
• MS Ignite – November 2nd-4th
• AWS Reinvent – November 28th-Dec 2nd (assumed)
• Oracle OpenWorld – TBC
• MS Build – TBC