Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

August 2020

MLOps - Logs, Metrics and Traces to improve your Machine Learning Systems

Once you’ve reached the point where you want to deploy your machine learning models to production, you will eventually need to monitor operations and performance. You might also want to receive alerts in case of any unexpected behavior or inconsistencies with your model or your data quality. This is where you most likely start learning about various aspects of Machine Learning Operations (MLOps).

Rethink Your Strategy for the Post-Covid Data Age

From an economic perspective, we see COVID-19 as the thing that brought global business to a standstill. But I think that in the longer term, we’ll see it as the catalyst for accelerated digital transformation. The effect of the virus on business and IT leaders has been to dramatically compress the strategic long view. The trends businesses saw coming over the next five to ten years, the developments that will drive growth opportunities or pose a disruptive threat ...

Prescription for Safe Reopening: Pivot Fast, Listen Closely, Adapt Along the Way

As colleges and universities work through their plans for a safe reopening this fall, they’re realizing that one of the most profound impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the system shock it delivered to the planning process. Post-secondary institutions have always had to be masters of innovation.

Do you KYC?

Compliance has often been a checkbox exercise, primarily seen as a defensive strategy in preventing financial penalties and PR embarrassments. However, some organizations have taken a different approach. They’ve used compliance on the offensive - to give a competitive edge, turning “compliance teams” into “innovation teams”. These companies have improved processes and increased customer experience. They’ve installed an elevator instead of fixing the ladder.

Don't Let Security Go Up, Up and Away (in the Clouds), Start with Data

Security teams can’t defend what they can’t see. As organizations move more workloads to the cloud, security teams need added visibility into these new workloads or risk having blind spots that lead to compromise. In the first installment of our "Getting Data In" webinar series, "Modernizing your SOC for the Cloud Age Starts with Security Foundations," we demonstrate how to quickly and easily onboard data into Splunk Cloud.

Moving Organisations Forward, Not "Returning to Normal"

As Australia prepares for the challenge of returning to the physical office, organisations nationwide are considering the best course of action when it comes to ensuring that their workers have the most adaptable and flexible approach possible. The year has been unpredictable and frightening, both on a societal and governmental level. Some companies have managed to weather the storm while others have struggled, and ultimately challenging times are as much ahead of us as they are behind us.

The Magnificent Seven: New Ways to Get More Out of Your Microsoft and Splunk Environment

As a leading global provider of cloud computing services with a business critical software portfolio, Microsoft is a key Splunk partner. In our mission to empower customers with data, we are delighted to share a few of the latest integrations, dashboards, and reference guides that help you extract even more value from your Microsoft environments. Here’s a peek at what we’ve been working on lately.

Introducing a New Splunk Add-On for OT Security

The lines Between IT and OT are blurring. With IT and Operational Technology (OT) systems converging, ensuring the security of devices, applications, physical locations and networks has never been more difficult or more important. There is a growing recognition by security professionals that they have a readiness and visibility problem in plain sight.

Bringing Threat Intelligence to Security Playbooks - Recorded Future and Splunk Phantom

Recorded Future is a longtime Splunk integration partner. Recorded Future's integration with Splunk Phantom allows them to empower security operations center (SOC) analysts with automated, real-time threat intelligence to drive smarter, faster security decisions.

Knowing the Value of 'Fast'

Software development (SDLC) value streams aren’t difficult to understand; you correlate all activity in the development process from planning to prod and relate activity to key objectives such as impact on revenue, application quality and user satisfaction. Unfortunately, most organizations approach value streams on an ad-hoc, manual basis. This approach to value streams requires significant effort, is prone to error and creates huge opportunity costs.

Meet the Fastest Forwarder on the Net

I have recently been heads-down working on a large Splunk Cloud PoV (20+ TB / day), and the customer asked if Splunk supported their forwarding technology called Vector. I had never heard of Vector, so I took a note to do further research. I couldn’t find anyone else at Splunk who had seen this technology before, so I embarked on a little research project. What I discovered surprised me—Vector is actually fairly powerful, and cool!

Splunk Redefines Application Performance Monitoring with SignalFx Microservices APM

Splunk has a new Application Performance Monitoring solution purpose-built for monitoring and observability in today’s app-driven world: SignalFx Microservices APM. Learn from Rick Fitz, SVP and GM of IT Markets, and Karthik Rau, Area GM for Application Management, about the new release of SignalFx Microservices APM and how it helps DevOps teams innovate faster, elevate customer experience, and future-proof applications — all while adopting cloud-native technologies and microservices architectures.

Upping the Auditing Game for Correlation Searches Within Enterprise Security - Part 1: The Basics

One question I get asked frequently is “how can I get deeper insight and audit correlation searches running inside my environment?” The first step in understanding our correlation searches, is creating a baseline of what is expected and identify what is currently enabled and running today. Content Management inside Splunk Enterprise Security is a quick way to filter on what is enabled (and it’s built into the UI and works out of the box).

A Day in the Life: Secrets of a Top Splunk Security Analyst

At Splunk, we’re proud to employ some of the top security analysts in the industry. On any given day, they’re investigating security incidents, triaging alerts and identifying threats so our systems and data — as well as those of our customers — remain secure. But what, exactly, do Splunk security analysts do? And what are some of their biggest challenges?

End-to-End Java Observability in 5 Simple Steps

Java is one of the most popular, flexible and useful programming languages with a very vibrant community to support it. Many of our customers use Java to create amazing applications, it’s an application on a single VM, or based on microservices running on Kubernetes. Naturally, we made it simple to understand the performance of Java-based applications using SignalFx Microservices APM.

Splunking Cisco Webex Meetings Data

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on our working lives. Companies have adopted by transforming their workforce to work remotely through video conferencing software. Cisco’s Webex Meetings, one of the most popular video conference softwares, plays a critical role in helping employees stay connected, enhance collaboration and drive productivity.

Using Splunk to Detect Abuse of AWS Permanent and Temporary Credentials

Amazon Web Services provides its users with the ability to create temporary credentials via the use of AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS). These temporary credentials work pretty much in the same manner like permanent credentials created from AWS IAM Service. There are however two differences.

Many-to-Many Communication: The Next Generation of Deterrence

Military strategists will often tell you that the best way to win a conflict is to prevent it by projecting an unmistakable posture of strength, preparedness and resolve. As history has shown in the seven decades since the Second World War, deterrence doesn’t come cheap, certainly not in the era of modern, technology-enabled warfare. Yet it is still far less costly in lives, dollars, and equipment than letting a hostile situation escalate out of hand.

The DevOps Workflow

At the center of DevOps practices is automation and workflow - but what does that actually mean? In this episode of Dissecting DevOps, Dave and Chris talk about the ideal state of DevOps workflows, and why an iterative approach to DevOps processes is critical for the long term success of DevOps practices and principles. Dave McAllister and Chris Riley are DevOps Advocates at Splunk.

From Feeding Families to Empowering Students: How Data Is Fueling Amazing Outcomes During COVID-19

We’re living history. We’ve heard it uttered in everything from news reports to conversations with loved ones. And it’s true — the tragedy and uncertainty of COVID-19 is shaping history and policy as we know it. But there’s something else newsworthy, too. Amid the pandemic, we’ve seen beacons of hope, humanity and progress. People have banded together to solve monumental problems at record pace.

Introducing SimData V1.2

Hopefully you caught our Splunk Developer Spring 2020 Update in May, if you haven’t yet what are you waiting for? It introduces many updates from Splunk, including Splunk’s latest simulation tool — SimData. SimData is the best way to simulate correlated data sets for your Splunk apps. Here, we’ll cover the basics, and we’ve provided some helpful links at the bottom of this post for more details. We’ve got your back.