A Guide to AWS re:Invent 2018

In just a few weeks, 40,000 cloud developers, engineers, architects, and security practitioners will descend on Las Vegas. AWS re:Invent officially kicks off on Monday, November 26, and anybody who has attended previous shows will tell you it takes a lot of planning to get everything you can out of the event. That’s why we wanted to lend a hand with a quick primer, a note on some of the sessions we’re most excited about, and a summary of what Threat Stack will be up to at the show.

Let’s get started

Tips & Tricks

• AWS realizes how intimidating a show of this size can be, so they do everything they can to help you plan ahead of time. We recommend taking advantage of resources like their incredibly useful pre-event AWS re:Invent 2018 Agenda Worksheet.
• Be realistic with your schedule. There’s a ton of great sessions, breakouts, workshops, etc., but with a show as massive as this, it can take longer than you expect to get around. Be certain to leave plenty of time for travel in between your engagements.
• Scheduled sessions are only part of the learning process. One of the biggest draws of a show like re:Invent is getting to meet fellow attendees. When else do you get a chance to be in the same place as 40,000 of your peers? Take advantage of the opportunity to learn from them through informal conversations and networking.

Threat Stack at AWS re:Invent

The Threat Stack team is going to be out in full force at Booth #1410, so come by for a live demo of our cloud optimized IDS. We’ll also be unveiling a modern-day Dungeons and Dragons spin-off for the cloud generation, so stop at the booth to grab the free Cloud Warriors Guide Book and D20 so you can unlock your armor class.

If you want to get right down to learning how to achieve security observability with a cloud optimized IDS, you can book a 1:1 meeting with one of our security consultants.

Threat Stack customer Chris Murdock, Senior Security Engineer at Conga, will be presenting Security Observability: Democratizing Security in the Cloud at 4:45 PM on Wednesday, November 28 in Aria East, Level 1, Joshua 8, T2. Make sure to mark your calendars for a great case study on how Chris and his team gained security observability within their cloud infrastructure by building measurement directly into systems.

Other Noteworthy Sessions

We’re obviously focused on the intersection of DevOps and Security, so you’ll notice a trend in the sessions we’ve singled out below. There’s definitely a lot more available at re:Invent, but here are some of the sessions we’re looking forward to this year:

• Mastering Kubernetes on AWS. Looking to get started with containers? Don’t miss this session to learn more about Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (Amazon EKS).
• Observability for Modern Applications. As cloud architectures become increasingly complex, end-to-end observability is critical. This session promises to offer great insights on how to achieve consistent, full-application observability.
• AWS Secrets Manager: Best Practices for Managing, Retrieving, and Rotating Secrets at Scale. We had a recent Deep Dive Into Secrets Management with Stenio Ferreira, Solutions Engineer at Hashicorp, but if you want to learn more about how to manage secrets within AWS, check this session out.
• Augmenting Security Posture and Improving Operational Health with AWS CloudTrail. CloudTrail is one of the most popular AWS Services, and we’ve provided a bunch of tips on how best to utilize it (see our recent post Creating Custom CloudTrail Rules in Threat Stack for an example), but this session will be an excellent primer on how to leverage this native AWS service.
• Moving to DevOps the Amazon Way. Threat Stack was a DevOps-focused company from the start, but many larger organizations have had to adopt DevOps the hard way. Hear the first-hand story of how AWS itself moved to a DevOps model, including the lessons learned along the way.
• Driving DevOps Transformation in Enterprises. We can never get enough DevOps, so we’re excited to hear about how large enterprises are using AWS CloudFormation and AWS OpsWorks to accelerate their transition to DevOps.

Clearly there’s a lot going on at AWS re:Invent, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of a packed agenda. Make sure to take some time to plan your week in Las Vegas. While you’re at it, don’t forget to schedule your 1:1 meeting with a Threat Stack security consultant, and make sure to reserve your spot for Security Observability: Democratizing Security in the Cloud with Conga’s Chris Murdock.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Blog – Threat Stack authored by Steve Lowing. Read the original post at: https://www.threatstack.com/blog/a-guide-to-aws-reinvent-2018