Introducing The Multi-Cloud Cyber Range — Azure v0.01
The Syracuse Metropolitan area is being praised as one of the most innovative hubs in the US, ranking in at #3.
Have you joined our collaboration? Register Now => Cyber Range — ‘City on a Cloud’ Initiative Sign-Up Form.
The Microsoft’s desire to invest directly in downtown with an open-partnership & collaboration was well received by the City of Syracuse council. They approved a memorandum outlining partnerships between Syracuse University, & CenterState CEO— the regions economic development office, and numerous other organizations like:
The Tech Garden, Careers in Code, TGI Player, & ‘Hack Upstate’ to name a few.
— all innovative companies bootstrapping the growth, incubation, and talent within the City of Syracuse as well as the broader counties across the state.
There are also well known HealthCare organizations with a respectable footprint of excellent medical care & service between Upstate Medical, Crouse Hospital, St. Joseph’s, and other related patient care facilities storing sensitive private data.
This SyracuseSurge initiative is about innovating our city, protecting our data, optimizing & connecting related government functions, and building a thriving 22nd century metropolitan state.
In General, NY is #49 of the List of 50 worst places to live. This isn’t the place to get political, so I’ll take the odds that Syracuse is focused on becoming great again & City Hall looks enormously promising.
Their Chief Data Officer, Sam E, is spearheading the discussions and establishing an enormous important presence in the discussions. The protection and proper use of the People’s Data as it flow’s throughout Systems. Much more discussion & input is going to be needed yet one thing I know for sure — Sam’s up for the challenge.
We met a few years ago when I walked into City Hall & we engaged in quite an interesting conversation. He empathized with the need, indicated change was coming, & requested some time.
He just delivered one of the largest new technology partnerships / investments this region has had. I immediately reacted to the change in Market & started setting up an Azure Account.
Amazon & Many others is Next Up…
On October 7th, 2019 roughly 3 weeks ago, I noticed Amazon’s HR job-board listing in East Syracuse. I posted a note in the Community Slack Channel.
Today, I see there are entry-level Picker/Packer jobs open in Liverpool.
My Open-Source Intelligence collection skills are handy in many ways.
Getting Setup as a Researcher
To remain the best, you must be an early adopter & invest in strategically aligned research constantly.
First, some ground rules — Responsible Social media marketing is a must. To remain open-source & product-agnostic we promote positive brand sponsorship w/ a general set of 3 core beliefs:
- Open criticism of tools for is simply inappropriate. I support a responsible disclosure process.
- Hard-core proven data & metrics telling a multi-dimensional story provide innovative solutions to opportunities is a solid way to provide a facts driven unbias perspective.
- Open-Source means everyone collaborates on the core components of the frameworks, documents progress, researches & develops at different paces, asks questions, & strives to give back to the community to fuel personal / professional growth of others.
If you are reading this, notice there is an core belief of interacting constantly, join the innovative movements, promoting the best-of-class brands / processes / ideas, learning from failures, and continuously improving.
I reserved an official Medium space for technical content and media related publications: https://medium.com/azure-cyber-range
Step 1 — Getting an Azure Account:
Pretty straight forward — Just sign-up with any email address using the link below.
Note: I was able to link my Syracuse University Account even though I received an error logging in.
Perhaps, that is a sign of a linger I&AM issue w/ the account of an old online mail server. Seems my account from my old JPMorgan Chase / SU relationship has its benefits :)
Unfortunately, I’m not in the iSchool. I did meet with Professor Du today. It was an absolute honor to meet him and discuss his near future plans of a sabbatical. This leaves an enormous gap to be filled as well as an opportunity to strength the brand of the SecDevOps@Cuse brand. I suspect the next round of Cyber Lab innovation requires a bit more technical leadership.
I created a personal Azure account to bypass any initial blocking access issues when starting to research, design, and prototype. I did submit a request to get the ball rolling with access. Notice the subscription mgmt support ticket I submitted!
Damn, Cappetta’s on his game. I won’t be able to constantly focus on this amount of progress yet it is well known that a bit of due-diligence research goes a long way towards progress.
Step 2 — Reserching Terraform Capabilities
I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again. Terraform is awesome. Immediately see a github multi-tiered framework that will get me setup quickly once I have an Azure Account. Very awesome framework to start with.
More to come on this — we’ve got 2 set’s of initial access, an Syr.edu account, & bright new shiny object to distract us for the next few months. I’ll be diving into Azure more in 2020.
Step 3 — Service Mapping across AWS & Azure
So we have Terraform — Perfect. Now let’s take a look at the services between the 2 clouds. If well-designed architecture principles are adhered to the change between the clouds are related to linguists, acronyms/terms, and names. I suspect the concept of the cloud is very similar — This is based on my Openstack to AWS conversion back when I switched from Cisco to Tenable.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/aws-professional/services
What’s Next
A lot more research, creation of new partnerships and collaborations — I just launched a City on the Cloud initiative to gain Amazon’s support. I believe we have a great chance of being successful.
Today, I announce the intent to deliver a Multi-Cloud Cyber Range initiative. I’ll need to go heads down until I can resurface with progress. I’ve got quite a full plate, FT work, prep for the BlackHat arsenal, Cyber Range AWS + Azure, & the Cyber Master’s program keeping me busy.
Did I mention I’m also joining the non-profit board for my local little league next month? I’ve been with the Solvay Tigers for 4 years now as a coach and we’re training champs!
