TASK

The Department of Spatial Information (DSI) is a State Government department. The major function of DSI is to provide accurate and timely spatial information to other Government departments, but also to make some of this spatial information available to the public. In order to provide both the government and public services, DSI has developed a number of web services that deliver this information through a number of internally developed services and applications. This suite of web services and applications is referred to as the DSI Online Spatial Delivery System (OSDS).

The OSDS is considered essential by DSI and their users, so these services must be:

· Readily available and accessible at all times,

· Capable of handling heavy loads in times of peak demand,

· Capable of serving downloads to users as required,

· Secure from attacks,

· Capable of providing detailed reports on usage.

DSI is considering the following strategic proposal:

· They plan to retain their data centre solely for archival and long-term data storage. This would entail updating their data storage infrastructure, and moving all other infrastructure into the Cloud.  

· They plan to initially move all their Web Services into the Cloud in order to provide an increased level of HA (High Availability) as well as a better degree of flexibility in supplying data to their customers and employees. 

o Their web services are running on the current Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers using Apache Tomcat

· They plan to change their current web software architecture to take advantage of the flexibility and scalability that can be gained by moving to a Microservices model (this would entail the use of such services as AWS Lambda or Azure Functions, Containers, Data Services, and Cloud Edge capability and monitoring).

o All Microservices are to be designed so that they can be easily moved from one cloud to another to suit requirements or to take advantage of price differentials.

· They plan to use a multi-cloud approach to provide increased reliability, access, price differentials and avoid vendor lock-in.

· They also plan to migrate their Spatial LoB (Line of Business) applications to the cloud in order to increase the application’s flexibility and availability. The Spatial LoB application suite will require:

o a number of IaaS instances running Windows Server 2019

o a number of PaaS instances for Microsoft SharePoint 2019 Enterprise 

· DSI are required under State Government legislation to keep spatial data sets in Australia.

The DSI Board is contemplating this strategy as a way to increase the company’s flexibility and responsiveness. The Board also expects to achieve significant savings by migrating to a Cloud based ICT infrastructure. They appreciate that this would entail retraining for:

· Their existing ICT staff so that they can manage the new Cloud based infrastructure,

· Their development staff so that they can start to develop using a Microservices model.

DSI has again approached you to advise them on this strategy. You have previously advised DTGOV that this strategic approach will mean that they will need to ultimately design and operate under a multi-cloud methodology, where parts of their data and services are located on and served from one public cloud, while other data and services are  located on and served from a different public cloud. 

DSI also plan to run a Risk and Security Workshop to assess the risks, security issues and possible methods of control that will be required with this Multi Cloud and Microservices approach. You will be required to organise, run and facilitate this workshop.

The Board is also concerned about how this strategy will affect their BCP (Business Continuity Plan) and their backup and disaster recovery strategies.

Tasks
Your team has been engaged to provide a report for DSI in their planned move to a Multi Cloud and Microservices strategy.

Team Setup
This assignment is a team assignment. The rationale for using a team approach is that most IT risk management assessments are normally done by teams of up to 8-10 people including Infrastructure and Cloud Architects, Information Security experts, Operations staff and Business unit leaders for each problem. You will be assigned to a team and the team, as a whole, will be responsible for the development of the report.

Team Member Responsibilities

Each team member will be assessed on:

• The final report presented      by the team;
• The individual contributions      that they have made to the report. This will be shown by the entries that      they have made in the Team forum;
• Team members should note      that:
  • A total of 20% of the total       marks for this assignment are for individual contributions to the team       task;
  • A team member without any       individual contributions in the Team Forum will be regarded as having not       contributed to the report. This will result in either reduced or no marks       being awarded to that team member for this assignment.

The tasks:
The team’s task is to prepare a report for DSI that discusses the following:

1. Describe the Cloud architectures you would employ to assist DSI to      meet the Board’s multi cloud strategy?
   1. Describe each of the architectures that you would use, along with       your reasons for deploying it. (10 marks)
   2. Describe the benefits, critical points and issues that would be       the likely result of the deployment of these architectures. (10 marks)
2. Describe the Information      Security risks that you see associated with this new Multi Cloud and      Microservices strategy. You should name and describe each risk that you      identify, estimate its likelihood and consequence and then describe a      possible control for the risk. This should be presented in a tabular form.      (20 marks)
3. Describe the general      Information Security steps and controls that you would recommend to the      Board to secure a Multi Cloud and Microservices architecture. You will      need to explain to the Board your reasons for recommending these      particular security steps. (20 marks)
4. Discuss briefly what you      would recommend should be included in DSI’s BCP as a result of their      adoption of a Multi Cloud and Microservices approach. You will need to      consider, as a minimum, the issues of application resilience, backup and      disaster recovery in a Hybrid Cloud environment. This section should be no      more than 2 pages. (10 marks)
5. Discuss the requirements      that DSI will need to consider in order to conduct remote administration,      resource management and SLA management for its proposed Microservices      approach. This section should be no more than two to three pages in      length. (10 marks)

The team is to provide a written report with the following headings:

• Proposed Architectures for a      Multi Cloud approach
• Threat and Risk Assessment      report for Multi Cloud and Microservices
• Proposed Information      Security controls for Multi Cloud and Microservices
• BCP changes to meet a Multi      Cloud and Microservices approach
• Microservices Administration      and SLA Management

As a rough guide, the report should not be longer than about 8,000 words