This week in DevOps we have announcements for AWS Transcribe and Activate. Azure rolled out some updates to Sphere and AttackDetection while GoogleCloud released version 1.0 of KubeFlow and added FlexSlots to Bigquery. Hashicorp addressed some technical debt with their release of version 2.0 for Sentinel Imports and AzureRM.
AWS
AWS::Transcribe – Automatic redaction of personally identifiable information
Amazon Transcribe can now remove PII (Personally Identifiable Information) from transcriptions automatically. Amazon claims Transcribe will remove the following types of PII and replace it with a placeholder which can be specified in advance.
- Social Security Number,
- Credit card/Debit card number,
- Credit card/Debit card expiration date,
- Credit card/Debit card CVV code,
- Bank account number,
- Bank routing number,
- Debit/Credit card PIN,
- Name,
- Email address,
- Phone number (10 digits),
- Mailing address.
Redacted and un-redacted versions of the transcription are available in case the full version is needed internally or for compliance.
AWS::Activate – Activate for Founders package has been launched
This package – which gives free AWS compute and support credits to qualified startups – previously required affiliation with a partner VC, Accelerator or Investor. With this announcement founders can now apply for their startup to receive $1000 in compute credits and $350 in support credits without any investor affiliation. This is great news for small bootstrapped startups or pre-seed startups looking to prototype cloud based projects. Go here to apply for your credits.
GoogleCloud
GoogleCloud::KubeFlow – Run ML workflows on Anthos across environments
This is a release of version 1.0 of Kubeflow which can run on Google’s Anthos for cross cloud and hybrid cloud environments. This enables cross environment ML workloads to run on Anthos seamlessly. KubeFlow claims to provide Security, Autoscaling and Logging for ML workflows. To read about the 1.0 release in more detail have a look at the announcement blog post.
GoogleCloud::BigQuery – Introducing Flex Slots
This appears to be similar to a spot capacity concept but for BigQuery. Capacity can be used in increments as small as 60 seconds. There will be some demand for this amongst Google Cloud customers with bursty analytics needs but it seems like a niche market for now as most users workloads are likely a bit more predictable.
Azure
Azure::AttackDetection – Fileless attack detection for Linux now in preview
Fileless attack detection for Windows has been available since October of 2018. This preview roll out now brings the same in memory attack detection to Linux on Azure. Whether this is useful against real world attacks remains to be seen but the concept is certainly promising especially when combined with good network level monitoring and intrusion detection.
Azure::Sphere – Now generally available
Azure’s IOT security platform Sphere is now out of preview and generally available. For more detailed information on Sphere have a look at the website.
Hashicorp
Hashicorp::Terraform – Sentinel imports V2 is now in preview
This is an update to the imports protocol for Sentinel Cloud to better align with HCL 2.0 topology and design. While Sentinel users are probably a niche subset of the Terraform customer base it’s good to see Hashicorp paying attention to the less used services and making sure everyone is supported.
Hashicorp::Terraform – AzureRM 2.0
Similar to the Sentinel update above this seems to bring the Terraform AzureRM design in line with HCL 2.0 standards. Specifically this update deprecates some obsolete functions, improves VM management and VM ScaleSets and adds a timeouts function.
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