Weekly AWS Update: Friday 5th April 2019

5th of April, 2019 / / No Comments

Well, it’s been a little quiet this past week in the world of AWS updates and releases. But there are still a couple of interesting announcements to cover off in this weeks article. We have a new feature available to Fargate workloads and a price Drop for those using DynamoDB global tables. A new Search expression for CloudWatch dashboards, and new policy abilities when working with CloudWatch alarms.

As always, this list is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all the updates and changes to the AWS eco-system, but simply a summary of changes that might have an impact on the business and trends we at Kloud are seeing within the industry.… [Keep reading] “Weekly AWS Update: Friday 5th April 2019”

AD FS 2016 and InvalidNameIDPolicy using SAML Authentication to SailPoint IdentityNow

4th of April, 2019 / / 2 Comments

I recently had a seemingly simple task for a customer to setup a AD FS 2016 relying party trust for their SailPoint IdentityNow deployment. Sounds easy right?

In this scenario AD FS 2016 was to be the Identity Provider (IdP) and IdentityNow the Service Provider (SP). Our end-goal of the solution was to allow the customer’s users to authenticate via SAML into IdentityNow using their corporate AD DS email address and password. Great outcome from a user experience perspective and for corporate governance too!… [Keep reading] “AD FS 2016 and InvalidNameIDPolicy using SAML Authentication to SailPoint IdentityNow”

Empowering your long running PowerShell Automation Scripts with SMS/Text Notifications

1st of April, 2019 / / No Comments

18 months ago I wrote this post that detailed integrating Push Notifications into your scripts. That still works great, but does require that you have the associated Push Bullet application installed in your browser or on your devices. More recently I wrote about using Burnt Toast for Progress Dialogs’ for long running scripts. That too is all great if you are present on the host running those scripts. But what if you want something a little more native and ubiquitous?… [Keep reading] “Empowering your long running PowerShell Automation Scripts with SMS/Text Notifications”

AD FS 4.0 and the curious case of claim issuance policy naming: Notes from the field [Updated]

1st of April, 2019 / / 2 Comments

The other day a colleague at Kloud, asked for a second set of eyes to look over and help with an Relying Party Trust setup in AD FS 4 (Server 2016). I obliged and went through a bunch of questions to try and determine what this issue might be.

To cut a long story short, the following is a quick bit of guidance when it comes to the naming of Claim Issuance Policies. I’ve found over the years that this can have a detrimental impact on configuration of an RPT if not setup with certain formatting.… [Keep reading] “AD FS 4.0 and the curious case of claim issuance policy naming: Notes from the field [Updated]”

Indexing a SailPoint IdentityNow Attribute in an Identity Cube for use in Correlation Rules

29th of March, 2019 / / No Comments

Joining/Matching rules in any Identity and Access Management Solution can make or break an Identity Lifecycle Management implementation. Out of the box SailPoint IdentityNow provides a number of common Identity Attributes that can be used for Correlation rules (joining/matching) from Identity Sources (connected systems).

Often though you want to add additional attributes to the list of Identity Attributes that can be used for correlation. The IdentityNow Portal does not provide this functionality, but it is possible via the IdentityNow API.… [Keep reading] “Indexing a SailPoint IdentityNow Attribute in an Identity Cube for use in Correlation Rules”

Weekly AWS Update: Friday 29th March 2019

28th of March, 2019 / / No Comments

Have you heard about containers?

Today is Friday, March 29th, are we are 25% of the way through the year and things are coming quick and fast in the world of Amazon Web Services. When I was going through the recent announcements in preparation for this article it was a pleasure to see that the world of containers has gotten a number of handy feature updates this week. From new pre-configured container images to testing tools and even new deployment options, it’s all happening this week.… [Keep reading] “Weekly AWS Update: Friday 29th March 2019”

Deploy VPN tunnel between Azure cloud and AWS cloud environment

28th of March, 2019 / / 1 Comment

Recently, I was working with a client who utilizes both AWS and Azure in their business and needed to establish a VPN connection across these cloud providers for certain services. This gave me the opportunity to work on establishing a VPN tunnel between the two public cloud offerings.

I would like to share the steps I used to establish the VPN (Site-to-Site) tunnel between Azure and AWS.

In the ideal world, the Azure VPN Gateway and AWS Gateway offering should have been enough to establish the VPN connection.… [Keep reading] “Deploy VPN tunnel between Azure cloud and AWS cloud environment”

Backups in AWS

27th of March, 2019 / / No Comments

In a previous blog (HERE) I discussed why backups were needed in AWS and about RPO, RTO and other TLAs. This blog will compare some of the different backup options available for your infrastructure in AWS.

Roll your own

AWS has really good options for managing your environment your way, whether this be scripts using CLIs, other software using APIs, or Lambda scripts. Managing your backup environment is no different. Lambda scripts can look for tags on your instances or volumes and create a snapshot.… [Keep reading] “Backups in AWS”

Building SailPoint IdentityNow Azure AD Source Filters

26th of March, 2019 / / No Comments

When you have a large Azure AD tenant it is likely that you want to scope your SailPoint IdentityNow Source based on the different type of identities it contains. Using the Filtering and Scoping section of the Azure AD Source Configuration Guide from Compass I first started constructing queries as I normally would with Azure AD against the Microsoft Graph API.

However the queries/filters I was using against Microsoft Graph were not working for the Azure AD IdentityNow Source.… [Keep reading] “Building SailPoint IdentityNow Azure AD Source Filters”

Microsoft Teams Announcements and New Features – Enhance your meetings today

25th of March, 2019 / / No Comments

Microsoft Teams has just turned 2. To celebrate, new features have been announced and are coming your way soon. With this wave of new features there aren’t many reasons left not to adopt Microsoft Teams. Many of our customers are embracing Teams as they see the value in a connected collaboration experience that brings together voice, chat, content & meetings.

For me, nothing beats a face-to-face meeting. Though, as people embrace flexible working, are geographically distributed or constantly on the go, connecting with others can be challenging.… [Keep reading] “Microsoft Teams Announcements and New Features – Enhance your meetings today”