It was a privilege to present to the members of the British Computer Society recently about Open Stack. It was so well received we had to stop the Q&A in order to get to the food and drink. You can see the whole talk in the video embeded in this post.
Multi Factor Authentication in AWS
Following on from the high profile hacking of and eventual closeure of CodeSpaces a few weeks ago, we decided to audit the policies Reconnix have in place for our internal Amazon Web Services account.
While we do not currently have any AWS applications in production, we do use it extensively for development and R&D. Like most organisations, we have a single master account and if this was to be compromised we could expose ourselves to some significant risks.
Logging into the account and going to the Identity Management section of the the AWS Console, the first thing I was greeted with was a message saying I needed to enable Multi Factor Authentication (MFA). A few minutes later I had enabled MFA using the virtual MFA device on my Android phone.
The process was worryingly easy. Having added MFA to the master account I was then able to define a group for operations and another for development, adding users was equally straightforward.
So, could this have saved CodeSpaces? No one is sure as they haven't gone into too much detail on how the intruders gained access, however what is clear is that Amazon provide the tools to both secure your console as well as create users & groups with a very fine grained level of access to various operational silos.
The Gap Years?
The Gap Years?
Many UK organisations are experiencing real difficulty recruiting IT and computing workers equipped with the right skills and knowledge required to drive business forward. To understand the problems facing these businesses, Reconnix has commissioned independent research into both the challenges facing employers and the attitudes of the current talent pool they wish to recruit from. The findings are presented in The Gap Years, an insight paper that uncovers the current trends in the IT employment landscape.
Download a copy of the report and share your thoughts with Reconnix on Twitter and LinkedIn.