How we designed our Kubernetes infrastructure on AWS

How we designed our Kubernetes infrastructure on AWS” is a case study of how Atlassian (the kind people behind BitBucket, HipChat, Jira, and a few other popular tools) setup their infrastructure on Amazon AWS.

With all the popularity of the cloud in general and AWS in particular, there is still not enough articles like this one.

AWS Adds Descriptions to Security Group Rules

AWS Blog lets us know that Amazon has finally implemented one of the most useful features ever – descriptions on Security Groups rules.  Previously, one could provide a description to the Security Group only, for example: “Proxy Server Access”.  Which wasn’t very useful, as it was almost obvious.  But now one can add a description to every rule inside the Security Group.  So when you have a Security Group with a bunch of IP address ranges, you can now describe each one of them.  For example: “HQ Office”, “UK Office”, “Boss At Home”, etc.

EU GDPR Helpful Resources

As a follow up to my earlier post about EU General Data Protection Regulation, here are a few helpful resources:

EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Here are a few things to get you started with European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).  First is a little introduction:

After four years of preparation and debate the GDPR was finally approved by the EU Parliament on 14 April 2016. It will enter in force 20 days after its publication in the EU Official Journal and will be directly application in all members states two years after this date. Enforcement date: 25 May 2018 – at which time those organizations in non-compliance will face heavy fines.

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) replaces the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC and was designed to harmonize data privacy laws across Europe, to protect and empower all EU citizens data privacy and to reshape the way organizations across the region approach data privacy.

And now a few key points from the Frequently Asked Questions page:

Who does the GDPR affect?
The GDPR not only applies to organisations located within the EU but it will also apply to organisations located outside of the EU if they offer goods or services to, or monitor the behaviour of, EU data subjects. It applies to all companies processing and holding the personal data of data subjects residing in the European Union, regardless of the company’s location.

What are the penalties for non-compliance?
Organizations can be fined up to 4% of annual global turnover for breaching GDPR or €20 Million. This is the maximum fine that can be imposed for the most serious infringements e.g.not having sufficient customer consent to process data or violating the core of Privacy by Design concepts. There is a tiered approach to fines e.g. a company can be fined 2% for not having their records in order (article 28), not notifying the supervising authority and data subject about a breach or not conducting impact assessment. It is important to note that these rules apply to both controllers and processors — meaning ‘clouds’ will not be exempt from GDPR enforcement.

What constitutes personal data?
Any information related to a natural person or ‘Data Subject’, that can be used to directly or indirectly identify the person. It can be anything from a name, a photo, an email address, bank details, posts on social networking websites, medical information, or a computer IP address.

Interesting, right? Have a nice day now.