A Journey in Three Parts
Many of us bear battle scars from answering technical implementation questions without a solid strategic grounding. To avoid this, we’ll build our exploration on a firm foundation with three key pillars:
1. The Strategy – Defining the “Why”: The webinar and workshop series starts by exploring the core “why” behind building a secure research environment and how to pull the right people into the conversation. We will examine the critical roles of compliance teams, research facilitators, and researchers in building a foundation for shared governance. Together, we will identify a comprehensive list of stakeholders and clarify our compliance targets, so we understand who determines whether we’ve made the right decisions.
2. The Design – Creating the Blueprint: Once our strategic foundation is set, we will look at design alternatives and mental models for creating a secure research enclave. This section will focus on how to approach challenging security controls and make appropriate technical choices, balancing them against the many potential tradeoffs we face. We will strive to maintain some agility to address constantly changing research needs, even once the initial deployment is complete.
3. The Technical Implementation – Getting Hands-On: The goal of this series is to equip you with the skills to make the best decisions for your institution and your cloud provider of choice. As this is an Internet2 CLASS effort, we will dive into the hard technical details and cloud technologies that are our bread and butter.
Who Am I?
I’m Jason Armbruster, CLASS consultant for Internet2, and I’ve spent the last several years at the University of Colorado Boulder wrestling with these exact challenges.
As the former associate director of Cloud Architecture and deputy director of Research Computing, I helped lead the University of Colorado Boulder through the complex journey of establishing secure cloud environments — from AWS Landing Zones for confidential data processing to Azure Government deployments for CMMC research support. Since my recent retirement, I’ve been consulting with Internet2 to lend that experience to the development of this series.
Through this work, one lesson has become clear — every institution’s path is different, and the most valuable insights come from our collective experiences.
Your Voice is Needed
This is a community effort, and its success depends on you.
Are you a veteran of these secure cloud environments with hard-won expertise and battle scars to share? Do you have a strong point of view on how to approach these challenges?
If you are in a leadership position, which topics are absolutely essential to make this series impactful for our community?
I invite you to connect with me and share your input as we develop this series. Let’s build this together.
Please contact me with your thoughts and ideas.
About Internet2 CLASS
The Internet2 CLASS program identifies, designs, and delivers in-depth cloud training and workshops designed to help the research and education community develop cloud computing and data science skills. Our goal is to empower IT and research professionals to utilize state-of-the-art cloud computing and data science tools to accelerate the technical computing expertise on their campuses.
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