We are pleased to announce that our recent submission to the CSA Star registry, for our Security self-assessment document, was successful. The Security Trust Assurance and Risk (STAR) Program encompasses key principles of transparency, rigorous auditing, and harmonization of standards. Companies who use STAR indicate best practices and validate the security posture of their cloud offerings.
The STAR registry documents security and privacy controls provided by popular cloud computing offerings. This publicly accessible registry allows cloud customers to assess their security providers in order to make the best procurement decisions.
As a member of this registry we:
With the successful submission of our self-assessment document to the CSA registry, we have completed our first step on the road to the full STAR Level 3 Goal.
For more information click here: https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/star/
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version="3.27.4" custom_margin="-35px||-2px" custom_padding="0px||0px"]
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src="https://3bb4f13skpx244ooia2hci0q-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/STAR-Table.jpg" align_tablet="center" align_last_edited="on|desktop" _builder_version="3.23" custom_margin="||40px|"][/et_pb_image][et_pb_text admin_label="Text 2" _builder_version="3.27.4"]
We have the breadth and depth of knowledge and experience to design, build and manage every aspect of your hedge fund technology. We offer next generation Corporate IT with cloud-based offerings such as O365 and OneDrive, Cloud Strategy Roadmap Design and Implementation, Data Science as a Service and Regulatory Technology solutions.
Talk to us about your public cloud strategy today. Contact us at hello@hentsu.com
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_cta title="Talk to us about your public cloud strategy today" button_url="https://hentsuprod.wpengine.com/contact" url_new_window="on" button_text="Contact Us Today" _builder_version="3.16" button_text_size__hover_enabled="off" button_one_text_size__hover_enabled="off" button_two_text_size__hover_enabled="off" button_text_color__hover_enabled="off" button_one_text_color__hover_enabled="off" button_two_text_color__hover_enabled="off" button_border_width__hover_enabled="off" button_one_border_width__hover_enabled="off" button_two_border_width__hover_enabled="off" button_border_color__hover_enabled="off" button_one_border_color__hover_enabled="off" button_two_border_color__hover_enabled="off" button_border_radius__hover_enabled="off" button_one_border_radius__hover_enabled="off" button_two_border_radius__hover_enabled="off" button_letter_spacing__hover_enabled="off" button_one_letter_spacing__hover_enabled="off" button_two_letter_spacing__hover_enabled="off" button_bg_color__hover_enabled="off" button_one_bg_color__hover_enabled="off" button_two_bg_color__hover_enabled="off"]Need to improve how you run your hedge fund technology? Concerned with your legacy private cloud provider? Not getting the service you need?
Hentsū can help!
[/et_pb_cta][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]We are pleased to announce that the 2019 AITEC DDQ is now available to all AITEC and AIMA members and we are now formally on the AITEC vendor list. The AITEC-AIMA DDQ for Vendor Technology and Cyber Security was created to streamline the process of conducting due diligence on vendors servicing the alternative asset management industry. We are proud to join this list of innovative solution providers as we continue to offer top expertise to our clients.
Do not hesitate to reach out to us for more information on the AITEC DDQ.
Click here, for more information on our memberships and partnerships: https://hentsu.com/solutions/ and additional information on AITEC can be found here: https://www.aitec.org.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label="Text 2" _builder_version="3.6"]
We have the breadth and depth of knowledge and experience to design, build and manage every aspect of your hedge fund technology. We offer next generation Corporate IT with cloud-based offerings such as O365 and OneDrive, Cloud Strategy Roadmap Design and Implementation, Data Science as a Service and Regulatory Technology solutions.
Talk to us about your public cloud strategy today. Contact us at hello@hentsu.com
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_cta title="Talk to us about your public cloud strategy today" button_url="https://hentsuprod.wpengine.com/contact" url_new_window="on" button_text="Contact Us Today" _builder_version="3.16" button_text_size__hover_enabled="off" button_one_text_size__hover_enabled="off" button_two_text_size__hover_enabled="off" button_text_color__hover_enabled="off" button_one_text_color__hover_enabled="off" button_two_text_color__hover_enabled="off" button_border_width__hover_enabled="off" button_one_border_width__hover_enabled="off" button_two_border_width__hover_enabled="off" button_border_color__hover_enabled="off" button_one_border_color__hover_enabled="off" button_two_border_color__hover_enabled="off" button_border_radius__hover_enabled="off" button_one_border_radius__hover_enabled="off" button_two_border_radius__hover_enabled="off" button_letter_spacing__hover_enabled="off" button_one_letter_spacing__hover_enabled="off" button_two_letter_spacing__hover_enabled="off" button_bg_color__hover_enabled="off" button_one_bg_color__hover_enabled="off" button_two_bg_color__hover_enabled="off"]Need to improve how you run your hedge fund technology? Concerned with your legacy private cloud provider? Not getting the service you need?
Hentsū can help!
[/et_pb_cta][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]Hentsu has taken the time to carefully construct this Azure Data Factory case study, to highlight the benefits of both the cloud and MS ADF. A client recently approached us with a data science challenge regarding one of their data sets. The data was provided to the client in an AWS environment in a Redshift data warehouse. While this was fast they found it to be very expensive, in AWS the data and compute costs are coupled together. As such, a large data set necessitates a high spend on computing costs, even if this level of speed is not necessary for their analysts.
However, the data was also available in CSV format in an S3 storage bucket, which could be the starting point of a new approach. The client already had all their infrastructure deployed and managed by Hentsū in Azure, so they wanted to consolidate into the existing infrastructure.
After reviewing the challenges, we were able to create an elegant solution leveraging the huge power and scale of the cloud, which is simply not possible in traditional infrastructure.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type="2_5" module_class="ds-vertical-align" _builder_version="3.25" custom_padding="|||" custom_padding__hover="|||"][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.1" background_color="#ffbb22" custom_margin="0px|||0px|false|false" custom_padding="20px|20px|15px|20px|false|false"]Hentsū recommended a solution built on Azure Data Factory (ADF), Microsoft's Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) solution for Azure. While there are many ETL solutions that can run on any infrastructure, this is very much a native Azure service. It also easily ties into the other services Microsoft offers.
The key functionality is the ability to define the pipelines to move the data in a web user interface, set the schedules which can either be event based (such as a creation of a new file) or on a time schedule. After that, Azure handles the execution of the pipelines to process the data. The pipeline creation requires relatively little coding experience. In other words, makes it easy to delegate this to staff with little technical experience.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type="2_5" _builder_version="3.25" custom_padding="|||" custom_padding__hover="|||"][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.1" background_color="#ffbb22" custom_padding="20px|20px|10px|20px|false|false"]
In this particular azure data factory case study, Hentsū built out the data pipelines to move the data from AWS into Azure. The initial load was triggered manually, but then the update schedules were set to check for new files at regular intervals.
Hentsū created status tables to keep track of each file. This allows us to keep track of the state of the data as it passes through the pipelines and use a decoupled structure so that any troubleshooting or manual intervention can happen at any stage of the process without creating dependencies. The decoupled structure meant that individual files and steps can be fixed in isolation. Following that, the rest of the pipelines and steps continue uninterrupted. The clean decoupling means any errors on a particular step were easily identified and notified to users for investigation.
All the data was then mapped back to these tables, to be used if we ever needed to do further processing or cleaning on the final tables. The data was further transformed with additional schema changes to match the client's end use and to map it to the traditional trading data.
The pipelines were deliberately abstracted to allow for the least amount of work to add new data sources in the future. The goal was to make it easy for the client's end users to do themselves as and when required.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built="1" admin_label="Benefits " _builder_version="4.1"][et_pb_row _builder_version="4.1"][et_pb_column type="4_4" _builder_version="4.1"][et_pb_text admin_label="Benefits & Caveats" _builder_version="4.1" custom_padding="50px||||false|false"]ADF can run completely within Azure as a native serverless solution. This means there is no need to worry about where the pipelines are run, what instance types to choose upfront, manage any servers/operating systems, configure networking, and so on. The definitions and schedules are simply set up and then the execution is handled.
Running as a serverless solution means true "utility computing", which is the entire premise of cloud platforms such as Azure, AWS, and Google. The client only pays for what is used, there are no times with idle servers costing money without producing anything, and it can scale up as needed.
ADF also allows the use of parallelism while keeping your costs to only what is used. This scaling up was a huge benefit of ADF for the client and when time is of the essence; one server for 100 hours or 100 servers for one hour cost the same, but the work is done in 1/100th of the time. Hentsū tuned the solution so the speed of the initial load was only restricted by the power of the database, allowing the client to balance the trade-off between speed and cost.
ADF has some programming functionality, such as loops, waits, and parameters for the whole pipeline. Although there is not as much flexibility as a full language (Python for example) it allowed Hentsū significant flexibility to design the workflows.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built="1" admin_label="Caveats" _builder_version="4.1"][et_pb_row _builder_version="4.1"][et_pb_column type="4_4" _builder_version="4.1"][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.1" hover_enabled="0"]
There are limited sources and sinks (i.e. inputs and outputs). The full list is available in the Microsoft documentation. Microsoft's goal with ADF is to get data into Azure products, so if one needs to move data into another cloud provider a different solution is needed.
The pipelines are written in their own proprietary "language." This means the pipelines code does not integrate well with anything else, which would not be the case if they were written in a language like Python, as many other ETL tools will provide. This is also the key reason we have developed our own ETL platform for more complex solutions which uses Docker and more portable Python code.
There were some usability issues when creating the pipelines, with confusing UI or vague errors on occasion; however, these were not showstoppers. Our advice when using the ADF UI is to make small changes and save often. We can see that Microsoft is already aggressively addressing some of the issues we encountered.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built="1" admin_label="Impact" _builder_version="4.1" background_color="#333333" custom_margin="||30px||false|false" custom_padding="||20px||false|false"][et_pb_row _builder_version="4.1"][et_pb_column type="4_4" _builder_version="4.1"][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.1" custom_margin="||0px||false|false" custom_padding="20px||30px||false|false"]
The client was very pleased with the ADF and Azure SQL Data Warehouse solution. This Azure Data Factory case study brought an elegant solution. The solution automatically scales the compute power to process the data as it changes week by week. It also scales up when there is more data, and scales down with less data. Overall, the solution costs a fraction of what it did previously whilst keeping it all within the client's Azure environment.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built="1" _builder_version="4.1" collapsed="on"][et_pb_row _builder_version="3.25"][et_pb_column type="4_4" _builder_version="3.25" custom_padding="|||" custom_padding__hover="|||"][et_pb_cta title="Reach Out To Find Out How We Can Support Your Data Science Needs" button_url="https://hentsuprod.wpengine.com/contact" button_text="Contact Us" _builder_version="3.17.6"] [/et_pb_cta][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]Microsoft recently had a flurry of announcements about Office 365 and especially Microsoft Teams. Below, we highlight some of the key changes important to the asset management space.
Office 365 can now set up policies that block users from downloading files from Outlook on the web to non-compliant devices. This helps provide more flexibility on the go, but still retains a good degree of security around your company files.
Azure AD Password Protection helps you eliminate easily guessed passwords from your environment, which can dramatically lower the risk of being compromised by a password spray attack. Specifically, these features let you:
To ensure clients have access to critical audit data to investigate security or regulatory incidents in their tenancy when required, the Exchange Online service introduces a configuration that automatically enables mailbox auditing on all applicable mailboxes to users of the Commercial service. With this update, it is no longer required to configure the per-mailbox audit setting for the service to begin storing security audit data. These actions are of high interest to understand the activities that are taking place within the tenant.
Microsoft released a preview of a new user experience that allows users to register security info for multi-factor authentication (MFA) and password reset in a single experience. Now when a user registers security info such as their phone number for receiving verification codes, that number can also be used for resetting a password. Likewise, users can change or delete their security info from a single page, making it easier to keep information up-to-date.
Meeting organizers have the option to prevent attendees from forwarding a meeting invitation. This option is available only for users in Office 365. In the first release, the option to prevent forwarding is available when creating or editing meetings in Outlook on the web, but the option will become available in Outlook for Windows shortly after.
Admins can specify TeamSite Libraries that they want their users to automatically sync with OneDrive for Business.
Microsoft Authenticator mobile app now supports sign-in with your face/fingerprint or device PIN to your work accounts. You can take out the security risk of passwords and have the convenience of using a device you already own and carry with you. This option can be configured by administrators in the Azure Active Directory.
For more Information on the latest Microsoft updates check out the roadmap here.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version="3.25"][et_pb_column type="4_4" _builder_version="3.25" custom_padding="|||" custom_padding__hover="|||"][et_pb_cta title="Contact Us" button_url="https://hentsuprod.wpengine.com/contact" button_text="Click Here" _builder_version="3.17.6"]
To learn more about how we can support you with these updates and more, contact us today.
[/et_pb_cta][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]