Technically Speaking

Data dissemination and file sharing between agencies and law enforcement authorities is a natural part of government business. But what happens when those files leave the security of domain-controlled network drives and content management systems?

In some ways, data has become just as much a colleague to federal IT managers as the person sitting next to them. Sure, data can’t pick up a burrito for you at lunchtime, but it’s still extraordinarily important to agency operations. Data keeps things going so that everyone in the agency can do their jobs – just like your fellow IT professionals.

We are going to take a simple but often misunderstood AWS methodology / feature and drag it out into the unapologetic sunlight via my way of looking at things. I tend to deal with IT professionals from all spectrums of the scale, so in the finest tradition of compromise, we are going to soar between 30,000 and 500 feet on this one.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a very large sprawling platform. As such, it has a very large collection of API’s to issue commands against. The AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) team has done a great job in the last few years of standardizing the commands – both in syntax and function.

Flood risk assessment and mitigation is a critical part of any civil engineer’s job. After Superstorm Sandy devastated the New Jersey/New York shore in 2012, it was discovered shortly thereafter that federal flood maps drawn up by FEMA were wrong. Unfortunately for many home and business owners, developers relied on FEMA’s assessment of risks when they built new homes near the water and property owners made decisions about whether to buy flood insurance based on those maps.

Transitioning to the cloud? Chances are, when you make the transition, you’ll take baby steps – assessing your workloads in totality and individually, determining the most efficient platform, preparing thoroughly and then migrating just that workload, then the next, and so on. It’s standard procedure and is the best way to proceed with minimal risk. What you’ve done here is create a hybrid environment. Most of your IT is still on-premise, but certain workloads are in the cloud. And it’s likely to stay that way.