As time-series database provider InfluxData adds the last major piece in its multi-cloud strategy, adding Microsoft Azure, it has entered an OEM agreement to embed its data platform into PTC’s ThingWorx IoT platform. PTC has not announced when the embedded database will be formally available, but we expect it will be sometime during the remainder of this year.

Under the agreement with PTC, InfluxDB Cloud will be sold, delivered, and supported by PTC as part of its ThingWorx service. In turn, PTC has had a long relationship with Microsoft dating back to its origins as a product lifecycle management (PLM)/CADCAM firm provider (a business that it’s stll very much in). And, while Microsoft Azure was already on InfluxData’s roadmap for its new cloud service (the service was already available on AWS and GCP), the PTC agreement hastened events.

Both companies are products of transition. InfluxData’s original sweet spot was with IT log data, a market that has been dominated by search-based analytics engines such as Splunk and Elasticsearch. But with the growth of IoT, most of its newer customers were looking to time series databases for use cases, especially in manufacturing operations. If the company had to embrace a second-generation serverless cloud-native architecture, the shift to IoT use cases provided a useful breakpoint as, arguably, most IoT data tends to live in the cloud anyway.

For its part, PTC pivoted about five years ago from the PLM market to add Industrial IoT (IIoT) — in essence, broadening its audience from design to add manufacturing engineers. ThingWorx is a framework for IoT services, including a modeling environment for defining digital “things;” a development studio for creating augmented reality experiences that can be used for interacting with IoT devices in the real world; a connectivity tier for linking, monitoring, and managing devices; and analytics for performing real-time pattern detection and automated predictive analytics. While also available on AWS, PTC designed Azure as the preferred cloud for ThingWorx. For ThingWorx, InfluxData provides the missing piece — a time-series database for persisting device data.

As noted, InfluxDB Cloud was originally designed as a cloud-neutral service based on a cloud-native architecture using microservices and running as a stateful application on Kubernetes. Initially released on AWS, the service went live on Google Cloud about three months ago as part of GCP’s open-source database program, which involves joint marketing and support of open source databases running on its platform.  There was little question that InfluxDB Cloud would eventually come to Azure, but with the OEM deal with PTC, Azure support was going to come sooner rather than later.

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2nd Watch today launched a managed DevOps service based on the continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) platform from GitLab that it will operate on behalf of customers in addition to coaching them on how to adopt best DevOps practices.

Stefana Muller, a senior product manager, said the 2nd Watch Managed DevOps service combines the managed and professional services capabilities of 2nd Watch into a single offering. That approach is required because when it comes to DevOps most organizations need as much help transitioning their culture as they will operating their CI/CD environment, she said.

One of the major challenges organizations face when trying to embrace DevOps is they typically spend a lot of money upfront only to see those efforts flounder when changing the internal culture of the organization becomes too difficult, Muller said. As part of an effort to smooth that transition, 2nd Watch DevOps experts will assess an organization’s readiness to adopt DevOps tools and processes and then train internal teams on DevOps fundamentals such as managing infrastructure as code and Git principles. The assessment is based on a Culture, Automation, Lean Practices, Measurement and Sharing (CALMS) methodology.

The 2nd Watch service is built around an on-premises edition of the GitLab CI/CD platform that it will host and upgrade on behalf of a customer on either an Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft public cloud platform. The DevOps service will focus on enabling organizations to build both monolithic and microservices-based applications faster because no organization today has fully transitioned to microservices. The company already provides a managed Kubernetes service for building and deploying applications based on a microservices architecture.

2nd Watch chose to partner with GitLab because of the completeness of that CI/CD platform, which among other things includes integrated security modules that can be employed to advance DevSecOps practices as well, Muller said, noting that longer-term, 2nd Watch is planning to layer a more robust set of managed DevSecOps services on top of the GitLab platform.

Managed DevOps offerings are starting to proliferate as the number of services providers that have attained certifications from multiple IT vendors has increased. It’s not clear to what degree organizations will prefer to rely on these services just yet. However, it’s is apparent many organizations are trying to shift as much of their limited resources to building application code versus managing IT infrastructure. It’s also possible that as the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic becomes more widespread many organizations will need to rely on external service providers to manage their DevOps environments.

Regardless of the motivation, organizations that are at the beginning of their DevOps journey clearly will need more help than those that are further along the DevOps maturity curve. The decision most organizations will need to make is to what degree will they rely on a managed DevOps service to accelerate their transition versus opting to rely permanently on an external IT service provider to manage one of their most critical IT environments.

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An operator customer buys a smart security camera to monitor her home. Savvy about the dangers of IoT devices, she connects the camera to her home WiFi network, which is protected with her broadband provider’s smart home security value added solution. So far, so good.

Her camera is now protected from malicious traffic. But that’s not necessarily the end of the story.

It’s well known that smart devices are vulnerable to hacking, due to a manufacturing cycle that prizes speed to market over getting the details of security right. Hence the need for smart home security solutions like F-Secure SENSE, conveniently available via broadband providers.

But the cloud services used to manage IoT devices are not necessarily secure either, putting consumers’ private photos, video feeds, personal information and other data potentially at risk in the event of a hack.

IoT cloud service breached

In late December, smart camera maker Wyze announced it had been hit by a data breach. The company confirmed that databases storing the information of millions of customers had been left exposed on the internet for weeks. The compromised data included email addresses, camera nicknames, Wi–Fi names, gender, health data such as weight, and information on the users’ Wyze devices.

Wyze attributed the breach to an employee error. The company warned customers to watch out for phishing attempts and spam, as their email addresses may have leaked to third parties.

It’s the bitter truth about cyber security today: Even if you take all the proper precautions to protect your devices and accounts from compromise, you still have no control over how well the cloud services behind those devices protect your data. As we have seen over and over in the news headlines, too often, when it comes to security, these cloud services fail us.

The ID theft risk is real

When consumer data is publicly exposed, the threat of identity theft looms larger. Often, victims are unaware for months, or even years, before the results of a compromised identity become apparent. Nearly 32% of breach victims back in 2016 later experienced identity fraud, compared to just 2.8% of individuals not notified of a data breach in 2016, according to Javelin Research.

An attacker can exploit any bit of personal information to try to monetize in some way. If encrypted password hashes are exposed, attackers will set about using automated tools to convert them to plain text so they can try them out on various services along with associated usernames. In the case of the Wyze breach, emails were exposed, giving attackers an opportunity to target live email accounts with phishing messages that would trick users into giving up their passwords. The goal: Account takeover, and attackers will try to get into as many accounts as possible.

With one compromised password, attackers can use automation to credential stuff their way into other accounts. Once an attacker obtains access to an account, he or she can assume the role of account holder. That means taking advantage of the account’s privileges by performing bank transfers, making credit card purchases online, transferring loyalty points, and so on. The attacker can also gather as much personal info on the victim as possible, to lead to other forms of ID theft. And he or she can change the account password, locking out the rightful account owner and ensuring the attacker’s ability to access it.

Victims of identity theft report damage in various areas of their lives: Stress and anxiety while trying to get the problem under control; financial impact; and loss of credibility when credit is tarnished.

Consumers are largely aware of the problem: In an F-Secure survey, 7 out of 10 consumers agreed they could likely become a victim of cyber crime or identity theft, while 56% are worried about losing their personal information as part of a data breach.

Protect your customers’ identities 

That’s why, when it comes to operator value-added services, a smart home security solution like F-Secure SENSE is perfectly accompanied by an identity protection solution.

While SENSE protects all the devices connecting to the home network from malware and viruses and offers parental controls, F-Secure ID PROTECTION adds a layer of security for cloud services. A password manager helps users create and store a strong, unique password for each online service, significantly reducing the risk of account takeovers.  ID PROTECTION also monitors for and detects leaked personal information in all corners of the web and dark web, and responds quickly to identity theft threats by alerting the user if their leaked data is found. Consumers are guided through step-by-step instructions if their info is found in a breach.

With ID PROTECTION, operator customers get best-in-class monitoring and alerting. Due to a combination of expert human intelligence and cutting-edge automated scanning technologies, F-Secure has the shortest lead times finding exposed data after a breach, and one of the highest hit rates for email addresses.

An ideal pairing

“F-Secure ID Protection is the perfect complement to our Connected Home Security solution,” says Kristian Järnefelt, Executive Vice President, Consumer Security at F-Secure. “It’s the opposite side of the same coin. Securing your devices and detecting if there are anomalies in your home network is essential, yet it doesn’t protect your data when it ends up in the cloud.  By combining human intelligence with dark web scanning, data breaches can be detected everywhere, much faster than it is by services that use dark web scanning alone.”

With both services working together, consumers get full protection for their IoT devices, the cloud services that work to manage these devices, and for their connected home.

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