Defining IT Strategy

9th of May, 2018 / / No Comments

Information Technology (IT) Strategy is a comprehensive plan that outlines how technology should be used to meet IT and business goals.

The following approach can be used to define your organisation’s IT Strategy.

Inputs:

  1. Organisational Business Priorities
  2. Organisational Key Behaviours
  3. How Business will be Supported by IT
  4. Technology Influences
  5. IT Strategic Principles
  6. IT Service Management Operating Principles

First of all, in order to define an IT Strategy, we need to obtain the above inputs (as much as possible).… [Keep reading] “Defining IT Strategy”

EU GDPR – is it relevant to Australian companies?

26th of March, 2018 / / No Comments

The new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) from the European Union (EU) imposes new rules on organisations that offer goods and services to the people in the EU, or collects and analyses data tied to EU residents, no matter where the organisations or the data processing is located. GDPR comes into force in May 2018.
If your customers reside in the EU, whether you have a presence in the EU or not, then GDPR applies to you.… [Keep reading] “EU GDPR – is it relevant to Australian companies?”

Azure ARM architecture pattern: a DMZ design with a firewall appliance

9th of March, 2018 / / No Comments

Im in the process of putting together a new Azure design for a client. As always in Azure, the network components form the core of the design. There was a couple of key requirements that needed to be addressed that the existing environment had outgrown: lack of any layer 7 edge heightened security controls and a lack of a DMZ.

I was going through some designs that I’ve previously done and was checking the Microsoft literature on what some fresh design patterns might look like, in case anythings changed in recent times.… [Keep reading] “Azure ARM architecture pattern: a DMZ design with a firewall appliance”

Azure ARM architecture pattern: the correct way to deploy a DMZ with NSGs

9th of March, 2018 / / No Comments

Isolating any subnet in Azure can effectively create a DMZ. To do this correctly though is certainly something that is super easy, but, something that can easily be done incorrectly.
Firstly, all that is required is a NSG and associating that with any given subnet (caveat- remember that NSGs are not compatible with the GatewaySubnet). Doing this will deny most traffic to and from that subnet- mostly relating to the tag “internet”. What is easily missed is not applying a deny all rule set in both the inbound and outbound rules of the NSG itself.… [Keep reading] “Azure ARM architecture pattern: the correct way to deploy a DMZ with NSGs”

Writing for the Web – that includes your company intranet!

20th of February, 2018 / / No Comments

You can have a pool made out of gold – if the water in it is as dirty and old as a swamp- no one will swim in it!

The same can be said about the content of an intranet. You can have the best design, the best developers and the most carefully planned out navigation and taxonomy but if the content and documents are outdated and hard to read, staff will lose confidence in its authority and relevance and start to look elsewhere – or use it as an excuse to get a coffee.… [Keep reading] “Writing for the Web – that includes your company intranet!”

Xamarin Application Architecture

17th of January, 2018 / / 1 Comment

In this post, I will talk about strategies for developing a cross-platform Xamarin application with a focus on code sharing, increasing testability, and reducing overall development and maintenance efforts.
The application architecture is itself problem specific, but there are certain design patterns that can guide the overall structure of the application. The ones I mostly work with are Model-View-Controller, Model-View-Presenter, and Model-View-ViewModel.
MVC should be adopted for small applications or proof of concept. Since Android and iOS both natively support MVC, it will mean fewer roadblocks and faster implementation.… [Keep reading] “Xamarin Application Architecture”

Be SOLID: uncle Bob

12th of October, 2017 / / 3 Comments

We have discussed STUPID issues in programming. The shared modules and tight coupling leads to dependency issues in design. The SOLID principles address those dependency issues in OOP.
SOLID acronym was popularized by Robert Martin as generic design principles dictated by common sense in OOP. They mainly address dependencies and tight coupling. We will discuss SOLID one by one and try to relate each of them with the underline problems and how they try to solve them.… [Keep reading] “Be SOLID: uncle Bob”

Set your eyes on the Target!

18th of August, 2017 / / No Comments

1015red_F1CoverStory.jpg
So in my previous posts I’ve discussed a couple of key points in what I define as the basic principles of Identity and Access Management;

Now that we have all the information needed, we can start to look at your target systems. Now in the simplest terms this could be your local Active Directory (Authentication Domain), but this could be anything, and with the adoption of cloud services, often these target systems are what drives the need for robust IAM services.… [Keep reading] “Set your eyes on the Target!”

What's a DEA?

14th of August, 2017 / / No Comments

In my last post I made a reference to a “Data Exchange Agreement” or DEA, and I’ve since been asked a couple of times about this. So I thought it would be worth while writing a post about what it is, why it’s of value to you and to your business.
So what’s a DEA? Well in simply terms it’s exactly what the name states, it’s an agreement that defines the parameters in which data is exchanged between Service A and Service B. … [Keep reading] “What's a DEA?”

The Vault!

4th of August, 2017 / / No Comments

Vault
The vault or more precisely the “Identity Vault” is a single pane view of all the collated data of your users, from the various data source repositories. This sounds like a lot of jargon but it’s quite simple really.
In the diagram below we look at a really simple attribute firstName (givenName within AD) DataFlow
As you will see at the centre is the attribute, and branching off this is all the Connected Systems, i.e. Active Directory.… [Keep reading] “The Vault!”