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Florida-based cloud computing startup Lonestar Data Holdings has raised $5M in Seed funding in a round led by Scout Ventures.
The company plans to use its funds to build multiple data centers on the moon and develop a platform for data storage and edge processing on the lunar surface.
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Lonestar will start by launching a small 2-pound data center to the lunar surface on Intuitive Machines’ second lunar mission, IM-2, later this year.
The company will eventually develop larger data centers equipped with more data storage and edge processing capabilities, which it aims to deploy on the lunar surface by 2026.
The lunar data centers specialize in remote data storage and disaster recovery.
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Lonestar CEO Chris Scott emphasized that the moon is an ideal location for data centers being that “there is no climate, no climate change, and access to renewable energy.”
In Dec. 2021, Lonestar tested out its proof-of-concept data center at the ISS.
Cybersecurity researchers at Mitiga have discovered a security gap in the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) that enables threat actors to exfiltrate company data stored in GCP storage buckets without an organization’s knowledge or consent.
The security gap is linked to GCP’s storage logs.
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The Mitiga researchers highlighted that GCP’s storage logs fail to provide a level of visibility that enables “any effective forensic investigation,” thus leaving organizations using the platform unaware of potential data exfiltration attempts.
GCP’s storage logs do not differentiate between different types of access, and only label such attempts with the same description/event (objects.get)
According to the researchers, Google does offer a setting that allows customers to activate specific storage access logs, but these are turned off by default and might cost extra.
Google responded to Mitiga’s findings and did not consider this a vulnerability. Nonetheless, both companies have provided a list of steps organizations can take to reduce risk and detect attacks. Google says companies can leverage VPC Service Controls, organization restriction headers, and restricted access settings to mitigate unwanted access.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently announced the launch of its re/Start program in South Korea.
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AWS re/Start is a free-of-charge workforce development training program that aims to prepare participants for cloud-related careers.
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Ham Kee-ho, the head of Amazon’s Korean unit, shared the news at a press conference in Seoul on March 7.
Ham announced that the company is offering a free 12-week entry-level cloud education program course “to help the unemployed and job seekers.”
The education program is offered at Megazone’s Cloud Education Center in Seoul. MegazoneCloud is lauded as the first and largest AWS Premier Consulting Partner in South Korea.
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In addition to cloud and technical skills training, AWS re/Start will connect program participants to potential employers and internship opportunities.
In 2020, AWS announced a goal of training 29 million people globally in cloud computing by 2025 through free training programs. The company claims to have trained 13 million people so far.
China-based tech titan Huawei unveiled its Smart Classroom 2.0 solution at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2023 in Barcelona.
This new offering enables smart teaching practices for better education and research outcomes.
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Huawei's Smart Classroom 2.0 leverages cloud, edge, and Wi-Fi 7 to digitally transform education and create an environment to promote immersive, experiential, and interactive learning.
The solution facilitates online learning by connecting video resources to Huawei's cloud platform.
Key features of the solution include live streaming, automated recording, class analysis, smart attendance, real-time speech-to-text conversation, and online video resource management.
Huawei says it has worked with over 2,800 clients from academic and research institutions spanning 120 countries and regions to deliver its smart education solutions.
A research report from Accenture titled “Banks need a flight plan to navigate the cloud” reveals that banks and other financial institutions (FIs) are increasingly migrating their workloads to the cloud.
However, these organizations are facing significant barriers to cloud adoption, including a cloud talent shortage, security and compliance issues, and the complexity of distributed cloud systems.
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According to the report, banks cite cost reduction (64%) and revenue growth (57%) as the two biggest motivating factors behind moving their core data functions to the cloud.
While many banks and FIs are aware of the benefits offered by cloud computing, core migration is still seen as high-risk due to security and compliance issues, the complexity of distributed cloud systems, and the inability to reap the full benefits of the cloud, all of which are heightened by “a lack of staff with cloud expertise to manage these core functions and the difficulty of recruiting the required skills in the current environment.”
Based on the report, nearly 4 in 5 banks use public cloud infrastructure for their enterprise systems, but 85% of workloads remain on-premises. This is largely attributed to a lack of timely cloud migration.
According to a recent report by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the complexity of cloud deployments is fueled by shortages of technical expertise, which often results in misconfiguration errors, thus making the cloud environment less resilient and secure.
According to an Alibaba Cloud survey, 84% of cloud service users in Asia will increase their spending on cloud computing in 2023.
The survey looks into spending trends by country and industry type.
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Alibaba Cloud collaborated with global market research firm NielsenIQ to conduct the survey, which was done in the form of online questionnaires from Sept. 2022 to Oct. 2022.
The questionnaires were sent to 1,000 cloud-strategy decision-makers representing diverse businesses that use cloud services in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, and South Korea.
Based on the survey results, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Singapore will increase cloud spending the most this year.
At the same time, respondents in Japan and South Korea plan to maintain their cloud spending.
The survey found that video gaming is the sector that is expected to experience the most significant increase in cloud investment, followed by media, telecoms, the internet, and financial services.
