Derek Talbott Blog

Throughout this Cloud Computing and Governance course, blogging gave me a chance to reflect on what I was learning from our reading and being able to connect it to real-world applications, especially some within my own job. While it sometimes took a little extra effort to think of unique perspectives for each week's topic, the process definitely helped reinforce my understanding of everything.  This skill is definitely useful in my current role, as the ability to clearly explain complex ideas is valuable in both technical and non-technical settings. I can see myself continuing to blog professionally in the future, whether for knowledge sharing, documentation, or company branding. For an employer, having someone who can communicate expertise in an approachable way adds value, not just as a technical resource but also as a voice that can represent the company’s thought leadership in the industry.  Thank you for taking the time and learning through this course with me. Until next...

This  week's reading of  Chapters 15–18 presents real-world cybersecurity execution, focusing on incident response and recovery, as well as  communication. The structured incident response planning approach stood out to me as the most important lesson from this week's material. A documented and practiced security plan reduces both the chaos of a security breach and the time needed for recovery and damage reduction. The chapters demonstrated that preparedness, together with coordinated efforts and clearly defined responsibilities, maintains equal importance to the tools and technology used for threat investigation. The preservation of evidence, together with lessons learned activities, were a crucial element in post-incident procedures. The process of cybersecurity maturity requires organizations to extend their incident response beyond immediate threat resolution through proper documentation and reporting. The chapters demonstrated how organizations can improve their defe...

Hello again, welcome to Week 9. The material from this week demonstrated that cloud performance and disaster planning require an active strategic approach for success. The main lesson I learned was how dashboards, logs, and alerts function together to provide complete visibility into cloud health. AWS CloudWatch and Azure Monitor tools serve beyond metric reporting because they enable automated responses, which both save time and minimize human mistakes. The concept of configuring alarms to trigger both technical threshold alerts and cost-saving actions, such as auto-scaling or unused resource shutdowns caught my attention. The main emphasis of the lesson focused on business continuity and disaster recovery. The presentation explained RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective) concepts through straightforward definitions. The recovery models presented as cold and hot standby provided an effective method to understand the relationship between cost and recovery spee...

The analysis of cloud storage this week revealed multiple essential elements that determine the appropriate cloud storage solution. The selection of cloud storage depends on three main factors, which include storage capacity requirements and data accessibility needs, data importance levels, and data structure needs. File system storage functions properly for team document sharing, yet fails to handle extensive unstructured data at scale. Object storage stands out as the best solution because it provides scalability features along with built-in metadata and REST API support. The presentation showed that backup strategies operate differently within cloud environments. It explained that durability stands apart from backup methods because organizations must protect their data through full incremental and differential backup approaches. The 3-2-1 and 4-2-3 rules provided essential guidance for organizations to protect their critical information. The module delivered valuable insights about ...

T he essential role of automation and continuous monitoring in enhancing cybersecurity posture was the main topics in this week's reading. The tools SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) and SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response), according to Chapter 14, help organizations streamline their threat detection and incident response processes. The tools stand out because they improve operational efficiency and decrease human mistakes particularly during intense security incidents. The fast pace of threat evolution makes manual security processes no longer sufficient for protecting against modern cyber threats. The main lesson shows that automation serves to strengthen human analysts rather than replace them. These systems enable cybersecurity teams to concentrate on advanced threats and strategic defense planning by eliminating false positives and performing regular tasks. The future of cybersecurity requires advanced technology to work in harmony with skill...

The emphasis on Identity and Access Management (IAM) this week demonstrates its essential role for achieving successful cloud deployment. The transition from perimeter-based security to identity-centric security within hybrid cloud environments became a key concept that caught my attention. The need to verify user identities has surpassed location-based verification because users now access services through various devices and locations. The implementation of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) together with certificate-based login and federated identities has become essential for modern security standards. I also gained a deeper appreciation for account lifecycle management. The process of creating accounts requires ongoing access reviews, user deactivation, and prevention of escalating privileges. The IAM features of AWS, Azure and GCP are extensive, but administrators must implement best practices including least privilege access and enforce robust password requirements. Organizations...