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Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) has made recent updates that demonstrate its commitment to providing seamless journeys for travelers. With new routes and a revamped app, the airline continues to prioritize the customer experience. Thérèse Lorenius ...

SAS Executive Talks New Routes and App Overhaul

Aviation Today

Barry University

Software Engineering

Remembering

Barry Dwolatzky, who passed away on 16 May, was much more than a computer geek. He was also a leader and a visionary in the field of software engineering in SA.

https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVFT.rMPGjPg_5fPrCNwEKg9egC&pid=News

Software engineering: Remembering SA’s Barry Dwolatzky

https://www.bing.com/th?id=ODF.iQFfk_dJ7pDT86Ix5oggVA&pid=news

sapeople.com

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Best antivirus software 2023: Which? Best Buys and expert buying advice

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TechRadar

Get the most recent info and news about SAS on HackerNoon, where 10k+ technologists publish stories for 4M+ monthly readers.

SAS Institute Inc. operates as a business analytics software and service company. The Company provides software applications including business intelligence, data integration, fraud management, financial intelligence, and IT management. SAS Institute operates worldwide.

SAS is an s a powerful analytics platform that allows users to perform complex data analysis and modeling tasks. To ensure high levels of performance and scalability, SAS offers a three-tier architecture that separates the different components of the system onto separate servers. This architecture allows for the metadata, data processing, and user interface layers to be installed on different servers for improved performance and scalability. In this article, we will discuss the steps to install a SAS three-tier architecture on an . AWS environment Provisioning EC2 Instances The first step in setting up a SAS three-tier architecture on AWS is to provision three EC2 instances. One instance will be used for the SAS Metadata Server, the second for the SAS Workspace Server, and the third for the SAS Stored Process Server. The size of the instances will depend on the size of your data and the expected load on your system. Here is an example Terraform code to provision three EC2 instances: provider "aws" { region = "us-east-1" } resource "aws_instance" "metadata_server" { ami           = "ami-0c94855ba95c71c99" instance_type = "t2.micro" tags = { Name = "metadata-server" } } resource "aws_instance" "workspace_server" { ami           = "ami-0c94855ba95c71c99" instance_type = "t2.micro" tags = { Name = "workspace-server" } } resource "aws_instance" "stored_process_server" { ami           = "ami-0c94855ba95c71c99" instance_type = "t2.micro" tags = { Name = "stored-process-server" } } Above code, we are using the AWS provider to set the region to us-east-1. We then define three aws_instance resources: metadata_server, workspace_server, and stored_process_server. Each instance has a specified Amazon Machine Image (AMI) and instance type and is tagged with a name for easy identification. Terraform Note that this is a basic example and you may need to modify the code to suit your specific requirements, such as adding additional configuration options, security settings, or networking components. Installing and Configuring the Required Software After provisioning the EC2 instances, the necessary software components need to be installed and configured on each of the instances. This includes installing the operating system, , database software, and SAS software. The specific versions of the software will depend on the version of SAS you are using and the requirements of your organization. Java Runtime Environment (JRE) Here is an example Ansible playbook for installing Java Runtime Environment (JRE), database software, and SAS software (SAS Preferred to installing GUI): name: Install JRE, Database Software, and SAS Software hosts: all become: true vars: java_version: "1.8.0" database_type: "oracle" database_version: "12c" sas_version: "9.4" tasks: name: Install JRE yum: name: "java-{{ java_version }}-openjdk" state: present name: Install {{ database_type }} Database Software yum: name: "{{ database_type }}{{ database_version }}" state: present name: Download SAS Software get_url: url: "https://example.com/sas/{{ sas_version }}/sas_{{ sas_version }}.tar.gz" dest: "/tmp/sas_{{ sas_version }}.tar.gz" name: Extract SAS Software unarchive: src: "/tmp/sas_{{ sas_version }}.tar.gz" dest: "/opt/sas" remote_src: true owner: sas group: sas name: Install SAS Software shell: "/opt/sas/setup.sh -deploy" args: chdir: "/opt/sas/install_data" Setting up the Metadata Server The SAS Metadata Server manages all metadata and user credentials for the SAS environment. Install and configure the SAS Metadata Server on the first EC2 instance. During the installation, you will need to specify the database and the location of the metadata repository. After the installation is complete, configure the metadata server using the SAS Management Console. Setting up the Workspace Server The SAS Workspace Server provides a connection point for SAS clients to execute SAS code and interact with data. Install and configure the SAS Workspace Server on the second EC2 instance. During the installation, you will need to specify the metadata server and the location of the workspace server data. After the installation is complete, configure the workspace server using the SAS Management Console. Setting up the Stored Process Server The SAS Stored Process Server provides a connection point for external applications to execute SAS programs and retrieve results. Install and configure the SAS Stored Process Server on the third EC2 instance. During the installation, you will need to specify the metadata server and the location of the stored process server data. After the installation is complete, configure the stored process server using the SAS Management Console. Configuring Network Settings After installing and configuring all the necessary components, network settings need to be configured to ensure that the three EC2 instances can communicate with each other. Firewall settings, security groups, and network interfaces need to be configured to allow communication between the three servers. It is important to follow best practices for securing your SAS environment on AWS. Testing the Installation Once all the components have been installed and configured, the SAS installation needs to be tested. Connect to the SAS Workspace Server using a SAS client application and run SAS programs on the Stored Process Server to verify that the results are returned correctly. By following the steps outlined in this article, you can install and configure a SAS three-tier architecture on AWS and achieve high levels of performance and scalability for your SAS environment. It is important to follow best practices for securing your SAS environment on AWS and to seek the assistance of a SAS expert if needed. Monitoring  a SAS Three-Tier Architecture using CloudWatch, and Splunk: CloudWatch Monitoring Amazon is a monitoring service for AWS resources and the applications running on them. You can use CloudWatch to collect and track metrics, collect and monitor log files, and set alarms. To monitor a SAS Three-Tier Architecture using , you can use the following steps: CloudWatch CloudWatch Enable CloudWatch logging for each EC2 instance running the SAS Metadata Server, SAS Workspace Server, and SAS Stored Process Server. This will allow CloudWatch to collect log data from each instance. Create CloudWatch alarms to monitor specific metrics for each instance. For example, you can create alarms to monitor CPU usage, memory usage, and disk space usage. Configure CloudWatch dashboards to provide a visual representation of the performance of each instance. This will allow you to easily monitor the performance of the system in real time. Splunk Monitoring is a platform for monitoring, searching, analyzing, and visualizing machine-generated data. You can use Splunk to monitor logs, metrics, and other data generated by the SAS Three-Tier Architecture. To monitor a SAS Three-Tier Architecture using , you can use the following steps: Splunk Splunk Install and configure the Splunk Universal Forwarder on each EC2 instance running the SAS Metadata Server, SAS Workspace Server, and SAS Stored Process Server. This will allow Splunk to collect log data from each instance. Configure Splunk to index the collected log data. Use Splunk to create dashboards and reports that provide insights into the performance of the system. These dashboards and reports can be customized to meet the needs of different stakeholders. Monitoring a SAS Three-Tier Architecture using CloudWatch, and Splunk is essential to ensure that the system is running optimally. By following the steps outlined in this article, you can monitor the performance of the different components of the system and gain insights that can be used to make informed decisions. Lead image . reference References: https://www.sas.com/en_us/home.html https://aws.amazon.com/ https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/intro https://www.splunk.com/

Powerful Data Analytics Software:  SAS Three-Tier Architecture Install on AWS Environment 

The SAS (Statistical Analysis System) Response To SQL Challenges in a Data Warehouse Environment

Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . April 25th April 25th MY DEAREST MAKAR ALEXIEVITCH,—Today I met my cousin Sasha. To see her going to wrack and ruin shocked me terribly. Moreover, it has reached me, through a side wind, that she has been making inquiry for me, and dogging my footsteps, under the pretext that she wishes to pardon me, to forget the past, and to renew our acquaintance. Well, among other things she told me that, whereas you are not a kinsman of mine, that she is my nearest relative; that you have no right whatever to enter into family relations with us; and that it is wrong and shameful for me to be living upon your earnings and charity. Also, she said that I must have forgotten all that she did for me, though thereby she saved both myself and my mother from starvation, and gave us food and drink; that for two and a half years we caused her great loss; and, above all things, that she excused us what we owed her. Even my poor mother she did not spare. Would that she, my dead parent, could know how I am being treated! But God knows all about it.... Also, Anna declared that it was solely through my own fault that my fortunes declined after she had bettered them; that she is in no way responsible for what then happened; and that I have but myself to blame for having been either unable or unwilling to defend my honour. Great God! WHO, then, has been at fault? According to Anna, Hospodin [Mr.] Bwikov was only right when he declined to marry a woman who—But need I say it? It is cruel to hear such lies as hers. What is to become of me I do not know. I tremble and sob and weep. Indeed, even to write this letter has cost me two hours. At least it might have been thought that Anna would have confessed HER share in the past. Yet see what she says!... For the love of God do not be anxious about me, my friend, my only benefactor. Thedora is over apt to exaggerate matters. I am not REALLY ill. I have merely caught a little cold. I caught it last night while I was walking to Bolkovo, to hear Mass sung for my mother. Ah, mother, my poor mother! Could you but rise from the grave and learn what is being done to your daughter! B. D. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (2000). Poor Folk. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2302/pg2302-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

Today I met my cousin Sasha

A Short History of the World, by H. G. Wells, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . THE BYZANTINE AND SASSANID EMPIRES THE BYZANTINE AND SASSANID EMPIRES The Greek-speaking eastern half of the Roman Empire showed much more political tenacity than the western half. It weathered the disasters of the fifth century A.D., which saw a complete and final breaking up of the original Latin Roman power. Attila bullied the Emperor Theodosius II and sacked and raided almost to the walls of Constantinople, but that city remained intact. The Nubians came down the Nile and looted Upper Egypt, but Lower Egypt and Alexandria were left still fairly prosperous. Most of Asia Minor was held against the Sassanid Persians. The sixth century, which was an age of complete darkness for the West, saw indeed a considerable revival of the Greek power. Justinian I (527-565) was a ruler of very great ambition and energy, and he was married to the Empress Theodora, a woman of quite equal capacity who had begun life as an actress. Justinian reconquered North Africa from the Vandals and most of Italy from the Goths. He even regained the south of Spain. He did not limit his energies to naval and military enterprises. He founded a university, built the great church of Sta. Sophia in Constantinople and codified the Roman law. But in order to destroy a rival to his university foundation he closed the schools of philosophy in Athens, which had been going on in unbroken continuity from the days of Plato, that is to say for nearly a thousand years. From the third century onwards the Persian Empire had been the steadfast rival of the Byzantine. The two empires kept Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt in a state of perpetual unrest and waste. In the first century A.D., these lands were still at a high level of civilization, wealthy and with an abundant population, but the continual coming and going of armies, massacres, looting and war taxation wore them down steadily until only shattered and ruinous cities remained upon a countryside of scattered peasants. In this melancholy process of impoverishment and disorder lower Egypt fared perhaps less badly than the rest of the world. Alexandria, like Constantinople, continued a dwindling trade between the east and the west. THE CHURCH (NOW A MOSQUE) OF S. SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE The obelisk of Theodosius in in the foreground statue on left Photo: Sebah & Foaillier Science and political philosophy seemed dead now in both these warring and decaying empires. The last philosophers of Athens, until their suppression, preserved the texts of the great literature of the past with an infinite reverence and want of understanding. But there remained no class of men in the world, no free gentlemen with bold and independent habits of thought, to carry on the tradition of frank statement and enquiry embodied in these writings. The social and political chaos accounts largely for the disappearance of this class, but there was also another reason why the human intelligence was sterile and feverish during this age. In both Persia and Byzantium it was all age of intolerance. Both empires were religious empires in a new way, in a way that greatly hampered the free activities of the human mind. THE MAGNIFICENT ROOF-WORK IN S. SOPHIA Photo: Sebah & Foaillier Of course the oldest empires in the world were religious empires, centring upon the worship of a god or of a god-king. Alexander was treated as a divinity and the Cæsars were gods in so much as they had altars and temples devoted to them and the offering of incense was made a test of loyalty to the Roman state. But these older religions were essentially religions of act and fact. They did not invade the mind. If a man offered his sacrifice and bowed to the god, he was left not only to think but to say practically whatever he liked about the affair. But the new sort of religions that had come into the world, and particularly Christianity, turned inward. These new faiths demanded not simply conformity but understanding belief. Naturally fierce controversy ensued upon the exact meaning of the things believed. These new religions were creed religions. The world was confronted with a new word, Orthodoxy, and with a stern resolve to keep not only acts but speech and private thought within the limits of a set teaching. For to hold a wrong opinion, much more to convey it to other people, was no longer regarded as an intellectual defect but a moral fault that might condemn a soul to everlasting destruction. THE RAVENNA PANEL, DEPICTING JUSTINIAN AND HIS COURT Photo: Alinari THE ROCK HEWN TEMPLE AT PETRA Photo: Underwood & Underwood Both Ardashir I who founded the Sassanid dynasty in the third century A.D., and Constantine the Great who reconstructed the Roman Empire in the fourth, turned to religious organizations for help, because in these organizations they saw a new means of using and controlling the wills of men. And already before the end of the fourth century both empires were persecuting free talk and religious innovation. In Persia Ardashir found the ancient Persian religion of Zoroaster (or Zarathushtra) with its priests and temples and a sacred fire that burnt upon its altars, ready for his purpose as a state religion. Before the end of the third century Zoroastrianism was persecuting Christianity, and in 277 A.D. Mani, the founder of a new faith, the Manichæans, was crucified and his body flayed. Constantinople, on its side, was busy hunting out Christian heresies. Manichæan ideas infected Christianity and had to be fought with the fiercest methods; in return ideas from Christianity affected the purity of the Zoroastrian doctrine. All ideas became suspect. Science, which demands before all things the free action of an untroubled mind, suffered a complete eclipse throughout this phase of intolerance. War, the bitterest theology, and the usual vices of mankind constituted Byzantine life of those days. It was picturesque, it was romantic; it had little sweetness or light. When Byzantium and Persia were not fighting the barbarians from the north, they wasted Asia Minor and Syria in dreary and destructive hostilities. Even in close alliance these two empires would have found it a hard task to turn back the barbarians and recover their prosperity. The Turks or Tartars first come into history as the allies first of one power and then of another. In the sixth century the two chief antagonists were Justinian and Chosroes I; in the opening of the seventh the Emperor Heraclius was pitted against Chosroes II (580). At first and until after Heraclius had become Emperor (610) Chosroes II carried all before him. He took Antioch, Damascus and Jerusalem and his armies reached Chalcedon, which is in Asia Minor over against Constantinople. In 619 he conquered Egypt. Then Heraclius pressed a counter attack home and routed a Persian army at Nineveh (627), although at that time there were still Persian troops at Chalcedon. In 628 Chosroes II was deposed and murdered by his son, Kavadh, and an inconclusive peace was made between the two exhausted empires. Byzantium and Persia had fought their last war. But few people as yet dreamt of the storm that was even then gathering in the deserts to put an end for ever to this aimless, chronic struggle. While Heraclius was restoring order in Syria a message reached him. It had been brought in to the imperial outpost at Bostra south of Damascus; it was in Arabic, an obscure Semitic desert language, and it was read to the Emperor, if it reached him at all, by an interpreter. It was from someone who called himself “Muhammad the Prophet of God.” It called upon the Emperor to acknowledge the One True God and to serve him. What the Emperor said is not recorded. A similar message came to Kavadh at Ctesiphon. He was annoyed, tore up the letter, and bade the messenger begone. This Muhammad, it appeared, was a Bedouin leader whose headquarters were in the mean little desert town of Medina. He was preaching a new religion of faith in the One True God. “Even so, O Lord!” he said; “rend thou his Kingdom from Kavadh.” About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. H. G. Wells (2011). A Short History of the World. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022, from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11870/11870-h/11870-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

THE BYZANTINE AND SASSANID EMPIRES

Saša Milić is uniquely placed to compare oracle networks objectively. On top of being a software engineer and data scientist, Saša is also a co-founder of API3. While she no longer works full-time at any network, Saša has worked closely with various oracle projects in the last few years; during her presentation at the Blockchain Oracle Summit, Saša shared “a smattering of hot takes” about some of the more widely used oracle networks in the space today – including Chainlink, UMA, Tellor, Nest and BAND. In this article, we’ll guide you through her presentation, sharing key concepts. https://youtu.be/c0aOAkjzTRA?embedable=true Chainlink Oracle Review The most widely used oracle network today, has a reputation for providing consistently good data. According to DeFi Pulse (at the time of presentation), 15 of the top 20 DeFi protocols by Total Value Locked (TVL) use Chainlink, making the network a cornerstone of the DeFi Ecosystem. Chainlink Chainlink works through a decentralized network of nodes that collect data from reliable sources and aggregate the results on-chain. Chainlink refers to this as “t ” because each oracle network, node operator, and the data source is selected in a decentralized way. hree layers of decentralization According to Chainlink, this in the network. eliminates any single point of failure Chainlink, established in 2017, is well-known for consistently providing reliable price data. Chainlink currently caters to the larger part of the DeFi ecosystem, with a majority of the top DeFi projects using their oracle services. Some projects using Chainlink price feeds include , , and . Aave Compound Synthetix Out of all the oracle projects currently on the market, Chainlink seems to be investing the most in cryptography research. According to Saša, almost half of the team at are qualified cryptographers. Chainlink has also integrated two Cornell projects, and . Town Crier is a system that connects smart contracts to external data from trusted websites while also ensuring the confidentiality of the data. Chainlink Labs Town Crier DECO DECO uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify off-chain data while maintaining full data privacy. Chainlink’s whitepapers were also co-authored by well-known cryptographer and Cornell Tech professor Ari Juels who is now the Chief Scientist at Chainlink Labs. Since Saša’s talk at BOS22 in June, Chainlink has that staking will be live later this year. Staking will provide the network with more crypto-economic security, as stakers will initially be tasked with identifying and reporting node operators that fail to meet predetermined standards. For more information on LINK staking, read . announced this article UMA Oracle Review At , security is formalized in an economic guarantee around the cost of corrupting an oracle through their Data Verification Mechanism (DVM). The way these economic guarantee works is based on the idea that every oracle has a minimum price needed to become corrupted. In most cases, this is the price needed to take control of 51% of the voting tokens and is called the Cost of Corruption (CoC). UMA On the other side of the CoC is the potential (PfC). This is the maximum amount of money that can be gained from corrupting an oracle. Therefore, if CoC is kept above PfC, there would be no economic incentive for someone to corrupt the oracle. UMA is designed to measure the PfC of all the contracts in their system, then keep CoC above that number through a series of token buybacks triggered when necessary – more information . Profit from Corruption can be found here UMA also employs the concept of the “Optimistic Oracle” based on their . In essence, when a contract requests data – the “requestor” – anyone can propose an answer – the “proposer.” dispute resolution model The proposer needs to post a bond together with their data. Anyone else can verify that data and raise a dispute to UMA’s DVM if the data is incorrect – the disputer. If no one disputes that data within a set amount of time, the proposer’s bond is released back to them, and they are paid a pre-agreed fee. Because disputes are economically incentivized, a lack of disputes can be seen as verification that a piece of data is true. This mechanism is what makes UMA an ‘optimistic’ oracle. Tellor Oracle Review was one of the earlier projects to talk about (OEV). Simply put, OEV is the potential profit a party could earn by being in the position to update the oracle. Similar in principle to Miner Extractable Value (MEV), if only one party is allowed to update an oracle, they would be in a unique position to take advantage of the difference in prices before they make the update. Tellor Oracle Extractable Value For example, if party A has control of the ETH/USD price feed updates on a certain exchange, then that party can make trades before updating the prices since they know which way the price is going. Tellor approached this potential problem by building an oracle protocol that is truly decentralized, allowing anyone to be a data provider. Their protocol takes advantage of OEV as a means of making payments to oracle data providers rather than using gas fees. A more in-depth explanation of OEV can be found in written by Nicholas Fett, CTO of Tellor. this article Tellor has also been integrated as a fallback oracle in the Liquity protocol’s , which is significant given the effort that the team at Liquity has put into oracle research and their top position on the list. dual-oracle system DeFi Safety Conversely, Tellor’s dispute resolution system has a natural paradox. The system works by paying people to dispute incorrect data. If they raise their dispute successfully, they are paid in Tribute (TRB), Tellor’s native token. The presence of disputers, therefore, works to discourage false reports in the first place. However, since disputers profit from reporting faulty data, discouraging false reports would decrease the demand for disputers since no faulty reports mean no one can profit from disputing. This, in turn, leads to no one watching the data to dispute its accuracy, which then creates more opportunities for false reports. This, as Saša notes, is not a problem unique to Tellor but is common in optimistic oracle systems. Nest Oracle Review is currently only used for price feeds, and miners provide the data for these prices. Nest When miners report a price, they have to put up the same amount of money that they are reporting. This means that if they indicate the wrong price, it creates an opportunity for someone to take advantage of the difference between the reported and actual prices to make a profit. Band “Cross-chain data oracle.” According to Saša’s research, has relatively high adoption within DeFi projects. Despite that, there has been only one known exploit of Band, indicating their overall reliability. Band Protocol Band’s are speed and scalability – to process a large number of data requests within seconds; cross-chain compatibility – to be able to serve most of the available blockchains, and data flexibility – to handle different types of data and the different ways they are retrieved. This, according to Saša, is lacking a key area – security. design goals Band also runs a separate blockchain called . This makes it harder to evaluate its security because the security of the oracle is dependent on the overall security of this sidechain – explained here by . Bandchain CoinDesk Additionally, BAND holders do not participate in validation directly on Bandchain. Instead, they delegate their tokens to validators, who run validation nodes and retrieve data from the data sources. In each request, validators are randomly selected to retrieve and verify the data before committing them to the blockchain – more information about their system can be found . Given the vital role that validators play in this system, Saša  is unsure if the low number of validators (67 actives at the time of publication, based on ) here Cosmoscan The Blockchain Oracle Summit was the world’s first conference to focus solely on the importance of oracles and their design. Leading builders and researchers from around the world gathered in Berlin to share their work and discuss challenges faced by a close-knit group of hardcore oracle enthusiasts. To keep up with more of Saša’s hot takes, follow her on . Twitter

Saša Milić Offers Hot-Takes on Chainlink, UMA, Tellor, Nest, and Band Protocol

We are in the midst of building the first version of our API Ops platform. One of the components which we are actively building is a developer console where devs can get an overview of their APIs and each endpoint’s performance. While building our UI, we are debating many of the fundamental front end architecture decisions that will shape our UI development. One of the biggest debates thus far was whether we would use SASS or CSS-In-JS for our styling. We know developers are facing these same questions every day, so we want to publish our thoughts in case they are useful to anyone else. Ultimately, we chose to move forward with CSS-In-JS as our primary styling mechanism for reasons specific to our business; we considered it important for the UIs we build to be easily embeddable within external UIs. We felt that CSS-In-JS was the best option for embeds, because integrators wouldn’t need to worry about dealing with style injection, and could theme our components into their style. We’d love to know your thoughts and how you reached decisions about styling your UI? Have you had any bad experiences with CSS-In-JS? Below is our full internal conversation only minimally edited for brevity:

​​Choosing Between SASS vs CSS Modules vs CSS-In-JS

Well, I would start with a short story which happened few months ago. My organization then was trying to switch their project management tool from an old and trended out Team Foundation Server to the new and sophisticated Azure Devops suit, deciding to use almost all the features it offers from version control to boards. What to say; I was in charge of the technical aspects of that migration, like devising branch and merge strategies to design and develop CI/CD pipelines. So here is what happened. We had a couple of front-end applications which extensively use as the primary style keeping format and they needed to be processed and compiled to ( ) while the build pipeline triggers. It caught me by surprise that there were no Azure DevOps extensions built to do this task which I desperately wanted back then. SCSS CSS because browsers only understand CSS So I made one which can compile sass files to CSS and also add vendor prefixes to the resultant css😊. PS: It is now available in the for free. visual studio market place This article is actually not meant to be a tutorial, but to shout out to the world that there exists an Azure DevOps extension for compiling sass files. However official documentation of this extension is enough alone for you to integrate it into your pipelines. Process Sass Files To use this extension you first have to install it in your organization, probably with the help of your organization administrator, since installing extensions needs special permissions. Once it is installed, this extension will be available to be used among the other pre-installed tasks. Once installed, you can configure the task of your needs. In order for this extension to work, the bare minimum parameters you need to configure are: which SCSS/sass file in your repository need to be compiled to CSS inputFile: Where exactly does the compiled CSS file need to generate outputFile: Other than the above two configurations, there are additional three features this extension provides you with: You can either select Normal or Minified. If selected Minified, the resultant CSS will be compressed style: You can opt-in for vendor prefixing. Learn vendor prefixing . If you enable vendor prefixing, the task will add vendor prefixes to the generated CSS file enableVendorPrefixing: here process-sass-files The extension uses two cli-s for it’s entire operations. The compiler and . By default, it uses the latest versions of these tools. However, you can configure the task in such a way that the task always uses the exact versions of sass and autoprefixer you use in your dev environment Tool Versions: process-sass-files sass autoprefixer-cli process-sass-files At last, your pipeline might look something like the above and be able to form a proper CSS file once the pipeline is run. Happy coding!

SASS Processing in Azure Devops Pipeline

A Learned Cat by 9-year-old Sasha Ch. Hey Hackers! I’m and I’m the Sasha Ivanova CEO & Founder of SHARPSHARK http://sharpshark.io/ First of all, I’d like to say a huge thank you to the community for recognizing as the winner of: HackerNoon SharpShark team HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - COPYRIGHT for 2021 Reporter: What does it mean for you to win this title? HackerNoon First of all, it was absolutely unexpected! We are really delighted that we were able to contribute something useful to the community. In SharpShark, we believe that Copyright protection is the second most important use case in Blockchain after cryptocurrency. How do you or your company intend to embrace the responsibility of this title in 2022? In 2022 we offered ourselves a very important mission - to help the youngest creators to learn about their authorship and intellectual property rights. And I want to share with you a short story behind it. Please have a look at the picture on the cover - from the one side, it’s a painting made by a 9-year-old girl, but from another side, it’s the unique digital asset existing only in Blockchain because the original painting was probably lost or destroyed in the art school. I met Sasha Ch., a 9-year-old daughter of my best friend, and she was upset because the art school where she studied took her artwork “A Learned cat” and never returned it back. “I would like to get a Learned Cat back, but the art school doesn't return it to me for too long time”, - says an author, 9-year-old Sasha Ch. from Russia. - “looks like it has been lost, or, . It’s a pity, I liked this piece and my family too. My idea was to interpret a female scientific cat. Cool to have a photo though, even if it's not the same”. if it was recognized like lack of artistic value, it will be reused by other students as a pallet to mix colors I was completely shocked. For example, in Latin America, from where Sharp Shark is, in every school my daughter got back ALL her creations, with or without artistic value. Every last scribble was returned to her! The concept behind that is that only the creator can decide what to do with her or his works. How is it possible that in some art schools happen things like that  when any work can be: lost; thrown away; recycled for pallets for other students; destroyed; disappeared; whatever else. And everybody thinks it’s normal just because it’s always been like that! I mean, how can young creators be inspired and motivated when they can't see the progress they made during the years of studying? Why would anyone else make decisions about something that is not of their own making? SharpShark helped Sasha Ch. to store her artwork in Blockchain and now it’s on Opensea: https://opensea.io/assets/matic/0x2953399124f0cbb46d2cbacd8a89cf0599974963/68525107274345107752855537343012204322148226335097009177862791850918892535809 Looking at her happy eyes, I was rewarded for all the years I dedicated to Blockchain and copyright protection. We have saved The Learned Cat! What are some of the goals you’re looking forward to accomplishing in 2022 (whether it be through company initiatives or your personal journey)? That is all why at SharpShark, we decided to make an educative course for the youngest creators teaching them about their author’s rights and showing them how to store their works on the Blockchain! As you look at the variety of concerning trends in the world around you, what solutions can you think of? Name three trends and three solutions. Be as brief or as detailed as you like. WEB 3.0 - users possess their own data IPFS - immutability of the content Metaverse - creating safe spaces to train skills After participating in this journey, is there anything that you would like the team to know? HackerNoon With Metaverse tendency a lot of people think that TEXTS will die! In SharpShark, we believe that text will never vanish. 'Scripts never get burnt’ as one writer said once. Every creation first of all is a thought, and the thought is a text. Besides, there are still billions of people who just LOVE TO READ. What is something special about you or your company that you’ve rarely had the chance to properly share but really wanted to? (Give this one a proper think, I’ll know if you didn’t!) Well… I have never said this to anybody. My personal battle for copyright protection started from a very traumatic event in my life. A very personal family video of my recently born daughter was sneaked and used for a documentary without any permission. The producers didn’t even tell me. I discovered it a year later and couldn’t do anything. Years later, I started to run SharpShark and can now help people deal with situations like this. What song or music album are you currently enjoying? I really enjoy silence. This is my favorite music album. What are some concepts you wish people knew more about? In SharpShark, we wish people know more about their rights, especially authorship rights. It’s so common in the world that artistic, musical, cinematographic works get stolen or plagiarized, and I’m sure every person can recall cases like this, so it’s become like a blind spot for people. It’s Just as common as drinking a cup of tea. We should teach kids from a very young age about their personal frontiers. For more information: Read about the Noonies . To see all of the winners you may visit , pick any award, and view the name that appears at the top. Or follow for posts with the list of names released over the course of the week of February 14, 2022. here this site this account Read the FAQs about or . To see all of the winners you may visit , pick any city and view the name that appears at the top. Or follow for posts with the list of names released over the course of the week of February 14, 2022. Startups here here this site this account Thank you to all of our sponsors! We truly appreciate your contribution to the tech world and thus the future! : Startups , , , , , , , , , , Blockster Brex FreeCodeCamp LaunchDarkly Coil Udacity Udemy Vercel Asia Pacific Transgender Network Bybit Everscale Network : Noonies The Noonies Awards are sponsored by: , , and hosted by: Bybit Avast TECH Domains HackerNoon

How we Saved A Learned Cat: Interview with Sasha Ivanova, CEO and Founder of SharpShark

In my , I discussed why Sass unit testing is a thing and why you may want to incorporate it into your project. If you were shocked to find out that this is something that is done, please let me explain in my first post. previous post Unit testing Sass functions wasn’t too complicated. But what about mixins? Testing-wise, it is quite similar. The only difference here is the syntax. Getting Started Note that the steps outlined here assume you have set up your test project similar to how it is described in the first post. If you have an existing project, you can follow along and delete the test artifacts later. For this tutorial, let’s create a simple viewport mixin similar to the mixin defined in . The mixin below will apply any styles passed into it if it is larger than the specified breakpoints. Copy the contents below into a new file within . screen-above() Cirrus /src/mixins.scss // mixins.scss

$breakpoints: (
    $xs: 640px,
    $sm: 768px,
    $md: 1024px,
    $lg: 1280px,
    $xl: 1536px,
);

// Applies styles for viewports greater than a certain breakpoint. An error is thrown if the breakpoint does not exist.
@mixin screen-above($breakpoint) {
    @if not map-has-key($map: $breakpoints, $key: $breakpoint) {
        @error 'The given breakpoint #{$breakpoint} for @screen-above does not exist.';
    }

    @media screen and (min-width: map-get($breakpoints, $breakpoint)) {
        @content;
    }
} Testing Before you write the test, make sure you have already done the prerequisites required to run Sass unit tests in the first place. You can read all about it in my first post . here Let’s start by creating our test file for mixins in . test/mixins.spec.scss @import 'true';
@import '../src/mixins.scss'; Let’s add our test block with the annotation. @describe @include describe('screen-above()') {
    
} Next, we will add our test case. @include describe('screen-above()') {
    @include it('should return screen-above 640px given $xs') {
        
    }
} Then, we will use the mixin to take the actual and the value we . Below we place the class in the output that includes the mixin. The would contain the CSS output we expect. assert() output expect .test screen-above expect @include it('should return screen-above 640px given $xs') {
    @include assert {
        @include output {
            .test {
                @include screen-above($xs) {
                    color: #fff;
                }
            }
        }
        @include expect {
            @media screen and (min-width: 640px) {
                .test {
                    color: #fff;
                }
            }
        }
    }
} To summarize this better: - describes the expected results. expect - the actual output from the mixin you are testing. output - a clause that binds the and mixins together for the test. assert output expect Running Your Tests Like in the previous blog post, you can now run to execute Jest for us. To be honest, it’s probably faster to just type instead. npm test jest npm test You should see the results of your first test similar to the output below: PASS  tests/scss.spec.js
  Sass
    screen-above()
      √ should return screen-above 640px given $xs (1 ms)

Test Suites: 1 passed, 1 total
Tests:       1 passed, 1 total
Snapshots:   0 total
Time:        2.143 s, estimated 4 s
Ran all test suites. Conclusion Well, that wraps up the tutorial on how to unit test mixins in Sass. In the next post, I will discuss how we can add error handling within our Sass that can be caught and tested using True. Thanks for reading! 💎 Thank you for taking the time to check out this post. For more content like this, head over to my actual . Feel free to reach out to me on and follow me on . blog LinkedIn Github Also Published Here

Why I Unit Test My Sass: Mixins 🧪

Did you know you could unit test your Sass/Scss? No? Me neither. If you were to ask me years ago if there was such thing as unit testing Sass let alone stylesheets, I would tell you that it would probably be manual or automated with some framework like Selenium. Testing would be slow, arduous, and not very lightweight. This was the past and luckily, we now live during a time where we have choices. Today, there exists a nifty little testing framework called that allows you to quickly write Sass unit tests without too much pain. It features a syntax that makes most front-end developers feel at home. If you have ever written unit tests using , then using won’t actually be that much different. True Jest True Why Unit Test Sass? Before we dive into the tooling, let’s discuss why we should do it in the first place. As a basic example, let’s say you’re building a simple application that takes employees' orders for Pizza Friday. It’s a simple form that people in your team can select some radio box for which pizzas they want. You manually test, ship, and it becomes a big hit within the company. Now the people demand more features. Next, they ask you for dropdowns to allow for customization. You rinse and repeat the process above and you ship it. Now suddenly, people aren't too fond of radio boxes because it doesn’t allow them to select multiple types of pizzas. You go back and make some changes and test. Fearing that you may have broken other parts of the app, you manually test as well. Each successive update becomes more and more of a drag until you decide to give up maintaining it all together. The point is, unit testing solves the repetitive and arduous task of manually testing features over and over again. It is essentially: A built-in sanity check for any new feature/integration into your existing application. A record/collection of all possible cases that may break your app. It is essentially free documentation for app behaviors given some input. Ensures that the code is maintainable even if someone else works in your codebase and makes a breaking change. Unit tests, if written properly, will catch those. Fewer fires in prod. No one likes putting out fires on a Friday night. These principles apply to so many parts of software development, so maybe it wouldn’t be too farfetched to also unit test your Sass. If you have a large project with lots of generated styles, debugging issues won’t always be that straightforward. Unit testing Sass should help with: Asserting that the inputs to your functions and mixins output what you expect. This is especially important if you use any third-party libraries. You don’t want your stylesheets breaking because of some breaking change upstream. Reduce the amount of manual testing required for checking styles. Checking Sass compilation errors that generate some of your stylesheets properly. Is this for me? I usually advocate for more testing regardless of the size of your project, but it might not be appropriate for what you are building.  You should be testing if: You use functions and mixins in your project, especially if they are on the more complicated side. Your Sass files are used in many other files. Your customer experience highly depends on how reliable the UI is rendered correctly. For example with an e-commerce site, you wouldn’t want your styles to accidentally hide the “Buy” button with some adjacent element. You’re building a library, like . Cirrus Caveats Although unit testing Sass sounds like it will solve all your design problems, it doesn’t. Using a framework like Sass True would help to make sure that the CSS generated is what you expect, however it is only limited to testing functions and mixins. The final CSS output is really up to you to double-check and verify by hand. The same applies to whether the Sass would compile properly or not. So how do I get started? The tutorial below walks you through setting up unit testing for a random Sass project. If you have another project you would like to add this to, then it may require some modification to the steps to fit your needs. We will be using as our transpiler of choice and the framework backed by Jest to write and perform our tests. Dart Sass Sass True In your project, first install the necessary dependencies: yarn add dart-sass sass-true glob jest Initialize your node project. npm init In your , define a test script to trigger Jest. package.json "scripts": {
    "test": "jest"
} To test, the first thing we need to have is source code. If you don’t have any, you can copy this function to use an example and add it to . string-split src/functions.scss /* functions.scss */
@function string-split($string, $delimiter) {
    $result: ();

    $index: string.index($string, $delimiter);
    @while $index != null {
        $substring: string.slice($string, 1, $index - 1);
        $result: append($result, $substring);
        $string: string.slice($string, $index + string.length($delimiter));
        $index: string.index($string, $delimiter);
    }

    $result: append($result, $string);
    @return $result;
} For this tutorial, we want to write unit tests to ensure that our string split function works as expected. Bind Sass True with Jest With that part done, let’s integrate Jest to work with Sass True. In essence, Sass True acts as the or that binds your unit tests written in Sass into something that Jest can interpret. glue Shim For our tests, let’s create a directory. Here we can throw whatever unit tests we want along with our shim file. Copy the shim file contents below and paste it into . test test/scss.spec.js // scss.spec.js
const path = require('path');
const sassTrue = require('sass-true');
const glob = require('glob');

const testPath = `tests/**/*.spec.scss`;

describe('Sass', () => {
    const testFiles = glob.sync(path.resolve(process.cwd(), testPath));

    // Run on each file with describe() and it() functions
    testFiles.forEach((file) => sassTrue.runSass({ file: file }, { describe, it }));
}); What this shim file does is search for all files ending with the extension to be unit tested. We use to resolve all paths given the regex. .spec.scss glob testPath For each test file, we will use Sass True to run the tests defined. In the second parameter of , we pass in the functions that we would want to use such as and within our Sass unit tests. If you are not sure what these functions do, luckily you can refer to the because they behave exactly the same as their JavaScript counterparts. runSass describe it Jest Documentation Writing Unit Tests Now comes the fun/boring part. Now we have to write the actual tests for our function. Let’s create our first test file under the path . string-split() test/functions.spec.scss The first thing we need to do is import the Sass True library and the file we want to test itself. /* functions.spec.scss */
@use 'true';
@use '../src/functions.scss'; What comes after will look very familiar if you are used to unit testing with Jest. The syntax is almost identical to writing JS, except = with a few minor syntactical differences. Instead of function calls, each of Jests’s global functions is defined as a mixin. First, let’s the item we are testing. This helps to group multiple test cases that test the same thing together. describe @include describe('string-split()') {
    
} Next, we will define the test cases themselves. We use the aka the keyword to specify each input we want to test our function with. it test @include describe('string-split()') {
	@include it('should return input string split using delimiter ","') {
        
    }
} To wrap this test case, we need a way to check whether the output value is what we expect, commonly known as asserting our output. The mixin is perfect for checking the output of . The first parameter is what’s output by the function under test and the second parameter is the expected output of that value. You can read more about it . assert-equal($assert, $expected) string-split() here Let’s say we want to test our function with an input string of with a delimiter of . Then, we should expect our output to be . We can write our test like this: apples,oranges,bananas , (‘apples’ ‘oranges’ ‘bananas’) @include describe('string-split()') {
	@include it('should return input string split using delimiter ","') {
        @include assert-equal(string-split('apples,bananas,oranges', ','), ('apples' 'oranges' 'bananas'));
    }
} Now you are ready to run your first test. Running Your Tests Remember that script we added in the file earlier? We can now run to execute Jest for us. To be honest, it’s probably faster to just type instead. package.json npm test jest npm test You should see the results of your first test similar to the output below: PASS  tests/scss.spec.js
  Sass
    string-split()
      √ should return input string split using delimiter "," (1 ms)

Test Suites: 1 passed, 1 total
Tests:       1 passed, 1 total
Snapshots:   0 total
Time:        1.058 s, estimated 6 s
Ran all test suites. 🎉 You Did It 🎉 Well, congratulations! Give yourself a big pat on the back for writing your first unit test in Sass. Unit testing is the most glamorous topic in any aspect of software development. It is arguably the part that developers dread the most as it is repetitive, boring, and disappointing when you find out the code you wrote is broken. However, it is the most essential mechanism that keeps code maintainable and explicit. Edge cases are explicit and all it takes is a single command execution to confirm any assumptions you had on how the system behaved given certain inputs. I previously thought Sass unit testing would never be a thing and why would it be a thing that developers would try to figure out. Today, I cannot think of developing or any large projects with hundreds of styles without unit testing. Cirrus Anyway, don’t forget to check out ’s amazing documentation to learn more about what else it can do. In the next post in this series, I will go over how you can easily test your mixins. True Thanks for reading! 💎 Thank you for taking the time to check out this post. For more content like this, head over to my actual . Feel free to reach out to me on and follow me on . blog LinkedIn Github Also Published Here

Unit Testing Sass: Functions 🧪

The way companies protect their networks is undergoing a seismic shift. Accelerated by the pandemic, migration to the cloud left many organizations vulnerable to cyberthreats, and some of the previously effective security measures were rendered futile. The perimeter-defense approach to cybersecurity ceased to be effective once the workforce turned hybrid. In turn, cybersecurity companies took notice and started upgrading their offerings to successfully combat the present-day security challenges like ransomware, DDoS attacks, phishing, or password theft, to name a few. To offer an adaptable service and counter the changing cyberthreat landscape, an increasing number of cybersecurity companies opt for . adopting the SASE framework What is SASE? Short for Secure Access Service Edge, SASE is a cybersecurity concept that intersects network and threat management tools to form a consolidated, cloud-based cybersecurity solution. It incorporates, but is not limited to, core components such as SWG (Secure Web Gateways), CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker), ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access), SD-WAN (Software-defined Wide Area Network), and FWaaS (Firewall-as-a-Service). SASE is a rapidly growing market, too. Gartner predicts that “over the next five years, the market for secure access service edge will grow at a CAGR of 36%, reaching almost $15 billion by 2025”. [1] Additionally, the consulting and research company sees the shift toward SASE as inevitable: "The legacy perimeter must transform into a set of cloud-based, converged capabilities created when and where an enterprise needs them — that is, a dynamically created, policy-based secure access service edge," says Gartner. [2] But the transition will take time. There are numerous reasons behind it, some of them being existing investments in hardware and most larger enterprises having separate network security and network adoption teams. Also, not every current SASE vendor can deliver all of the required SASE capabilities. For the model to be fully functional, its policy needs to be consistently enforced regardless of location and cover all types of access, it has to be administered easier, the end-user experience has to be transparent as well as simplified, and it should deliver a zero-trust networking posture, among other conditions. The cybersecurity industry is beginning to fully embrace the SASE model, too. Vendors providing solutions for organizations are expanding their offerings to align with the SASE framework. "The cybersecurity landscape is evolving rapidly - when we first started providing services for businesses, the cloud wasn't as advanced and widely applied as it is now," said Donatas Tamelis, Managing Director at , a B2B cybersecurity company. "Many companies still relied upon on-site servers, and the workforce wasn't as remote. The pandemic exposed countless organizations security-wise, and the industry reacted by accelerating the shift towards SASE." NordLayer Cloud security vendors see SASE as the go-to approach to protecting the business cloud environment because of its holistic nature and ability to simplify the user experience without compromising the robustness of a company's network. Why SASE is important for businesses "SASE keeps networks protected against ever-evolving cyberthreats without putting additional strains on a company's IT and other departments, and is effortlessly scalable," added ’s Managing Director. "Using different providers to fill out gaps in an organization's security architecture is not just difficult to do - for companies with small or non-existent IT departments, it's simply impossible. Our company is one of many that endorse the model for the actual value it creates for clients." NordLayer Even though SASE is not a fully defined framework yet, and there is hardly a security company now that provides all its capabilities, industry players are endorsing the new trend en masse. "We see SASE being deployed across the industry, with companies big and small adjusting their offering according to the framework's blueprint," Tamelis continued. "We are a perfect example of the trend - our recent rebrand was in part to move beyond being just a business VPN provider. To stay protected in this cybersecurity climate, companies need to have access to a range of easily manageable, deployable, and interconnected tools." [1] Gartner, “Forecast Analysis: Secure Access Service Edge, Worldwide”, Joe Skorupa, Nat Smith, 27 July 2021. [2] Gartner, “2021 Strategic Roadmap for SASE Convergence”, Neil MacDonald, Nat Smith, Lawrence Orans, Joe Skorupa, 25 March 2021. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Why SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) Matters for Businesses

Photo by Tom Barrett on Unsplash In the past year, the world has changed, and the way we work has changed, too. Technology, driven by the cloud and mobile devices, has brought people, processes and apps together like never before. Working from home, from coffee shops and in pop-up coworking spaces are the new normal. This digital transformation in infrastructure has significant implications for networking, which will have to adapt to new working patterns and be more flexible. As businesses become more connected and the traditional ways of working change, networks are being designed to be more agile to suit the needs of the new enterprise. The Rise of the Cloud has fundamentally changed the ways people and organizations work. But more importantly, the very nature of the cloud must change how organizations think about security. The rise of the cloud Many organizations underestimate the complexity of managing cloud applications. Often, cloud applications are deployed “as is,” without the proper security controls needed to prevent data leakage, data exfiltration or malware infection. This exposes organizations to entirely new vulnerabilities. lack of security oversight Therefore, the most significant security challenge that companies face is their lack of control over the data being accessed in the cloud. To reduce the risk of cloud app breaches and vulnerabilities, IT administrators need a way to monitor and control these connections. Edge Computing and the Security Shift The increasing number of IoT-based devices, many of them without the benefit of advanced security software, as well as the recent increase in computing power at the edge, have given rise to a new security paradigm. The are large and complex. As edge computing becomes increasingly prevalent, traditional security mechanisms must be rethought and adapted to this new security environment. security risks posed by edge computing The rising number of connected devices and data being generated at their network’s edge results in a spike in the number of potential entry points for cyberattacks, which can be costly to organizations. A key element of security is limiting access to network resources. In traditional data centres, this usually meant setting up firewalls, network segmentation and intrusion detection systems. In edge computing, however, access to resources is harder to control. This is because edge computing devices are closer to end-users and are often deployed in environments without the same network security and monitoring levels. However, the scale at which edge devices operate can also introduce security issues. And that is the problem that most enterprises face today. Solving the Cloud Edge Security Challenge The shift from a traditional, centralized approach to cybersecurity to a distributed, cloud-native approach requires a fundamentally different understanding of security monitoring: one in which security is deployed and managed as close as possible to where data flows. technology solves this problem by breaking down the communications, networking and security silos that plague enterprises today and replacing them with a hyper-secure, cloud-native architecture. The SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) SASE’s decentralized cloud-delivery model creates a framework that securely connects users to applications and resources, no matter where they are. is that it provides a consistent, scalable, software-defined security architecture that applies security policies to applications regardless of where the application resides. How SASE works SASE is also designed to operate in conjunction with existing security solutions, so companies can still leverage their current investments while transitioning to SASE. What follows is an explanation of various aspects of the development of SASE technology over the years since its introduction. 1. Proactive Security Traditional security controls, such as firewalls, IPS, IDS and gateways, don’t consider today’s dynamic threat environment. They hinder intelligence gathering, block critical data needed for effective threat hunting, and exacerbate workflow inefficiencies in security operations. The traditional approach to security is reactionary, designed to respond to known threats after a breach has occurred, while the new model is more proactive, designed to identify, isolate and remediate threats before they occur. 2. Endpoint Visibility Most enterprises already have security systems in place but lack the real-time visibility and control they need to ensure all business-critical . SASE platforms bring visibility, control, and automation to security, enabling businesses to manage risk across the organization better. endpoints are secure As business dependency on endpoints, applications and edge locations increases so does the need for a unified but decentralised security platform that integrates across endpoint, application and network layers. Individual approaches are addressing threats from specific entry points, but they're not addressing the underlying problem. 3. Risk-based Security SASE solves this challenge by tying together identity and access management (IAM), user-based security, endpoint-based security, and user-behaviour analytics to provide a holistic view of risk. The risk-based approach to security controls is efficient, flexible, and cost-effective, supporting personal and enterprise security policies. SASE provides the ability to define easily, control and audit access to virtually any enterprise resource, maximizing security while simplifying IT operations. 4. User Access The reality today is that enterprises are increasingly being faced with the challenging task of enabling their users to access enterprise applications securely, no matter where they are or what device they are using. The security model in SASE is based on the . It treats users and applications as identities instead of devices. It enforces policies based on user identities, identities of applications, and identities of data actors so that only authorized users and applications can access the contents. identity-based security approach Conclusion Essentially, the pandemic has forced businesses to reimagine how they operate, and the workforce is no exception. The nature of work has changed, and this shift is likely to have long-term effects. The transition to cloud data storage and edge computing might have made business processes more efficient. Still, it also introduced new challenges that made businesses weaker and more vulnerable to security risks. The idea is that if how we work has changed, then how we secure our data must change too. However, what obtains in many organisations is the transformation of their work processes while sticking with traditional security tools and approaches. The SASE is an innovative technology that closes the gaps and ties the loose ends going forward with business operations and networking trends.

Cloud Computing and the Evolution of SASE Cybersecurity 

To briefly explain what we are trying to do here: . We want to have permission to read and write Kafka topics Our Kafka is protected by Kerberos. It means, before we start accessing Kafka, we need to obtain a ticket from Kerberos. To get the ticket we have to provide a keytab — authentication file for each user. All these steps have to be done automatically because when we use commands to access Kafka there won’t be an opportunity to show keytab manually. To get things done we need to specify the right parameters and configurations in the right place. Here is my environment (your tools and versions may vary but the approach still should work): Cloudera Hadoop cluster v. 5+ Kafka v. 2+ ( topic with Kerberos auth already exists) Spark v. 2+ Kerberos v. 5 Jupyter Notebook with Pyspark For the beginning, let’s access the protected Kafka topic with the terminal. The topic access should only be granted if we obtain a ticket from Kerberos for the right user. For this operation, we need to prepare (it will be smoother if all the files will be in the same path): User’s keytab file ( for Kerberos ) For the beginning, let’s access the protected Kafka topic with . Access to the topic should only be granted if we obtain a ticket from Kerberos for the right user. For this operation we need to prepare (it will be smoother if all the files will be on the same path): terminal User’s keytab file ( for Kerberos ) File : jaas.conf KafkaClient { com.sun.security.auth.module.Krb5LoginModule required useKeyTab=true keyTab=”${PATH_TO_YOUR_KEYTAB}“ principal=”${USER_NAME}@${REALM}”; }; File kafka_security.properties: security.protocol=SASL_PLAINTEXT sasl.kerberos.service.name=kafka sasl.mechanism=GSSAPI File (probably located in or ) (see for more details) krb5.conf /etc/krb5.conf /etc/kafka/krb5.conf JDK’s Kerberos Requirements Then we need to export the variable with and jaas.conf krb5.conf : KAFKA_OPTS=” Djava.security.auth.login.config=jaas.conf -Djava.security.krb5.conf= krb5.conf” export /etc/ Then we can write and read Kafka topic from Terminal. For writing: /bin/kafka- -producer --broker-list ${KAFKA_BROKERS_WITH_PORTS} --topic ${TOPIC_NAME} --producer.config kafka_security.properties console For reading: /bin/kafka- -consumer --bootstrap-server ${KAFKA_BROKERS_WITH_PORTS} --topic ${TOPIC_NAME} -- -beginning --consumer.config kafka_security.properties console from Hope everything worked! Let’s do the same thing using . Spark The challenge here is that we want Spark to access Kafka not only with the application driver but also with every executor. It means each executor needs to obtain a ticket from Kerberos with our keytab. To make Spark do this, we need to specify the right configurations. Firstly, we need the same : jaas.conf KafkaClient {
com.sun.security.auth.module.Krb5LoginModule required
useKeyTab= keyTab=”${YOUR_KEYTAB_FILE} “
principal=”${USER_NAME}@${REALM}”;
}; true Before launching Spark, we also need to export the variable: SPARK_KAFKA_VERSION= export 0.10 In Spark code we will access Kafka with these options (the first 5 is mandatory): kafka.bootstrap.servers=${KAFKA_BROKERS_WITH_PORTS}
kafka.security.protocol=SASL_PLAINTEXT
kafka.sasl.kerberos.service.name=kafka
kafka.sasl.mechanism=GSSAPI
subscribe=${TOPIC_NAME}
startingOffsets=latest
maxOffsetsPerTrigger= 1000 You can pass these options map to: spark.readStream.
 format( ).
 options(myOptionsMap).
 load() "kafka" Before starting Spark we can define the shell variable. JAVA_OPTIONS= "-Djava.security.auth.login.config=jaas.conf -Djava.security.krb5.conf=/etc/krb5.conf" Also, we will need two copies of users Keytab with different names. If we already have one, we can create the second one with the command: cp $USER_NAME.keytab ${USER_NAME}_2.keytab And to launch the spark application we should run this command: spark2-submit \
--master yarn \
--conf \
--conf \
--conf \
--conf \
-- {USER_NAME}.keytab "spark.yarn.keytab=${USER_NAME}_2.keytab" "spark.yarn.principal=$USER_NAME@$REALM" "spark.driver.extraJavaOptions=$JAVA_OPTIONS" "spark.executor.extraJavaOptions=$JAVA_OPTIONS" " . . " \
-- - - -0-10 .11-2.4.0. \
-- " . ","$ class org example MyClass jars spark sql kafka _2 jar files jaas conf " \
my_spark.jar Or you can use the same configurations with or . spark-shell pyspark Note: to allow Spark access HDFS we specify and . To allow Spark access Kafka we specify and and provide files , mentioned in so every executor could receive a copy of these files for authentication. And for spark kafka dependency we provide jar suitable for our spark version. We can also use option --package instead of --jars. spark.yarn.keytab spark.yarn.principal spark.driver.extraJavaOptions spark.executor.extraJavaOptions jaas.conf , ${USER_NAME}.keytab JavaOptions spark-sql-kafka Hope everything worked! Let’s do the same trick in PySpark using Jupyter Notebook. To access the shell environment from python we will use . os.environ os sysos.environ[‘SPARK_KAFKA_VERSION’] = ‘ ’ import import 0.10 Then we should configure the Spark session. spark = SparkSession.builder. \
config(‘spark.yarn.keytab’, ‘${USER_NAME}_2.keytab’).\
config(‘spark.yarn.principal’, ‘$USER_NAME@$REALM’).\
config(‘spark.jars’, ‘spark-sql-kafka – _2 – .jar’).\
config(‘spark.driver.extraJavaOptions’, ‘-Djava.security.auth.login.config=jaas.conf -Djava.security.krb5.conf= krb5.conf’).\
config(‘spark.executor.extraJavaOptions’, 
‘-Djava.security.auth.login.config=jaas.conf 
-Djava.security.krb5.conf= krb5.conf’).\
config(‘spark.files’, ‘jaas.conf,${KEYTAB}’).\
.appName(“KafkaSpark”).getOrCreate() -0 10 .11 2.4 .0 /etc/ /etc/ we can connect to Kafka like this: kafka_raw = spark.readStream. \
format(‘kafka’).\
option(‘kafka.bootstrap.servers’, ${KAFKA_BROKERS_WITH_PORTS}). \
option(‘kafka.security.protocol’,’SASL_PLAINTEXT’). \
option(‘kafka.sasl.kerberos.service.name’,’kafka’). \
option(‘kafka.sasl.mechanism’,’GSSAPI’). \
option(‘startingOffsets’,’earliest’). \
option(‘maxOffestPerTrigger’, ). \
option(‘subscribe’,${TOPIC_NAME}). \
load() 10 To access the data we can use: query = kafka_raw. \
    writeStream. \
    format( ). \
    start() "console" That’s it. I hope you could find all the configurations you need to access Kafka using Kerberos any way you like. Also published . here

How to Authenticate Kafka Using Kerberos (SASL), Spark, and Jupyter Notebook

At SonarSource, we believe that just like developer-led Code Quality did a decade ago. Finding Vulnerabilities immediately after they're introduced instead of weeks later just makes more sense. But what does that mean for the risk and compliance teams that lead those efforts today? Those jobs don't go away. Actually, they get more interesting and possibly even more important. developer-led Code Security will inevitably come to dominate the SAST market Today, security auditors really aren't in an enviable spot. First they're working with tools that take a no-news-is-good-news approach; tools that raise issues for anything even remotely suspicious. So Security auditors spend a significant chunk of their time on the drudge work of identifying the few things that really need action in a sea of false positives. Once they've done that, they can't actually fix the code themselves. Instead, they have to deliver the bad news to the folks who actually can - the developers - and convince them to switch focus from delivering business value to correcting code they haven't thought about in weeks. stale It doesn't sound like a dream job, does it? But with developer-led Code Security, things get better. First, . We put those Vulnerabilities front-and-center for developers, so they're handled while the code is still fresh in mind. if we raise a Vulnerability, you there's something to fix know And because it's integrated into their workflow, developers will fix most Vulnerabilities and review Security Hotspots as a matter of course. That lets security auditors move out of the enforcer role. Instead of "You must fix this old code!", they can shift into collaboration and oversight. Security Hotspots The first opportunity here is around . We provide a specialized interface and background data for developer review of Security Hotspots. But even so, some Security Hotspots won't be straightforward. This is where security auditors can step in and guide developers through the tricky cases to reach a good resolution. Security Hotspots And that leads to the oversight role auditors can now assume in the process. They can begin to look at things like: what rules are in the Quality Profiles and which conditions are in the Quality Gates? And then they can go deeper: are there patterns in the types of issues being raised that additional training can help with? Pattern Spotting with SonarQube That pattern-spotting can be done manually on the issues page, but offers reports that can help identify patterns, and more importantly help translate them to the development team in language coders are familiar with. Either way, under the new paradigm, security auditors spend less time identifying the real issues and more time making sure they get properly addressed. SonarQube's Enterprise Edition With the shift to developer-led Code Security, risk and compliance folks move out of the middle-man position. They're no longer the bearers of bad news. Instead, they become collaborators with development teams. Together, they can ensure that software is more secure. And that's good for all of us. Previously published at https://blog.sonarsource.com/security-auditors-the-cinderella-story-of-sast

Developer-Led Code Security Will Dominate the SAST Market

In 2008 SonarSource upended the static analysis market for code quality and reliability. Today it's doing it again for code security. When SonarSource was founded in 2008, code quality was the realm of specialists, who typically reported their results just before production deployment, weeks or months after the code was written. Inevitably, by then the authors had moved on to other things - mentally if not physically - and getting anything fixed was a contest of wills. Fast-forward to today, and you find that most teams have integrated static analysis from the first keystroke, starting with SonarLint in the IDE and moving forward with SonarQube and SonarCloud in the CI/CD workflow. With code quality and reliability integrated into the development workflow, the bad-old-days of specialist-owned, quarterly analysis may seem as quaintly horrific as an old film. But in the realm of security analysis, much like , that paradigm has so far refused to die. Today most SAST (Static Application Security Testing) tools are still owned and run outside the development team. Results are delivered intermittently, and if the past is a guide, no one really code security. The security team can't own it because they can't it; they can't change the code. And developers can't own it because they can't of it. They don't own the rules, the timelines, or the reports, so they own the result. Boris Karloff Karloff's Mummy owns impact take ownership can't Fortunately, you have the tools in hand today to break that pattern and shift code security - like code quality and reliability - to developers. With the SonarSource model: SAST is integrated into the development workflow by making it part of the tools developers already use: SonarQube and SonarCloud analysis.That means quick security feedback, and - because the code is still fresh in mind - efficient, effective fixes.Giving developers control of SAST tooling lets them take ownership of code security, so pushback turns into pride of workmanship. Those are the changes that are visible on the surface. But making this work - making sure developers accept, respect, and act on SAST feedback - means a more fundamental shift. It's not enough to change how, and when issues are raised. issues are raised has to change too. Most SAST tools raise issues for everything even remotely suspicious and let the auditors sort it out. But developer-led security won't work that way. Developers simply don't have the time or the patience for false positives. Which At SonarSource, we know all about killing False Positives. It's been our mission for years now, first with Bugs and Code Smells and now with Vulnerabilities too. In fact, earlier this year we acquired RIPS Technologies for access to their SAST engine. Our own SAST analysis was already pretty good, but with the addition of RIPS, it's even more precise. But it's not just about technology; the underlying philosophy has to change too. I'll write more on that next time and leave you with this: Good developers to write good (and secure!) code. Let them know they already have the tools to do that - and the - and all you have to do next is just get out of the way. want SonarCloud latest versions of SonarQube

SAST Analysis: No Angst Edition

Hey SonarQube and SonarCloud users! You now have a tool to own Code Security! SonarSource has been hard at work for the last year to give you the tooling to review and improve your code security. We're glad to say that today you have at your fingertips unmatched precision and performance in SAST (Static Application Security Testing) analysis for five languages and counting. We've been working to bring you Code Security for a couple years now, and those efforts took a giant leap forward this spring when we acquired RIPS Technologies. RIPS initially caught our eye with the depth and precision of their PHP analysis. Seeing that, we knew their depth plus our breadth - analysis of 27 languages - would make a great combination. We joined forces in May and immediately started work to combine our two approaches. Since then, we've re-engineered our detection of injection vulnerabilities from the ground up to incorporate the best of RIPS' approach and ours. The result: today you have access to unparalleled precision in security analysis of Java, C#, PHP, Python and JavaScript code, with more languages to come. I can say "unparalleled precision" because we've focused in this work on eliminating false positives. Old-school SAST tools aren't built for developers. They cast a very broad net, raising an issue for everything even remotely suspicious, and make an auditor sort it out. At SonarSource, we know developers don't have time for that. So we've made sure that when we raise an issue, you can be confident there's something to fix. At the same time, we haven't sacrificed performance; analysis is still extremely fast. The best part is that you don't have to learn a new tool. These SAST advancements are part of what you already know and love: SonarCloud and SonarQube. Vulnerabilities and Security Hotspots start in SonarQube Community Edition and injection Vulnerabilities (taint analysis) is available in commercial editions. And they're available today. Getting started is as easy as making sure your Quality Profile (and your version!) is up to date. By adding SAST to SonarCloud and SonarQube, we've put the power to own Code Security in your hands. That represents a fundamental shift, and there's a lot more to say on the topic. I'll save that for the New Year. For now, enjoy the holidays and your new toy: SAST analysis built for developers.

Review and Improve Your Code Security Analysis in SAST

Do you often write CSS rules for pages and have to copy parts of the rules from file to file? You probably haven’t heard of the SASS extension that exists to help you solve this problem. What is SASS? SASS is a CSS extension that lends superpower and elegance to this formal simple style language. SASS gives you the ability to use variables, nested rules, mixins, inline imports, and more, all with fully CSS-compliant syntax. The essence of this article is to give you an idea of how SASS works in different cases and it’s up to you to decide if you need it. Syntax For SASS there are two types of syntaxes: SASS & SCSS. SASS provides a more concise way of working with CSS. It uses indents instead of braces to separate selector attachments and newlines instead of semicolons to separate properties. Syntax has the same functionality, as well as SCSS. Files that use this syntax have a extension. .sass SCSS (Sassy CSS) used throughout this article is the advanced CSS syntax. This means that each valid CSS style sheet is a valid SCSS file with the same logic. Files that use this syntax have a extension. .scss Files can be automatically converted from one format to another using the sass-convert command: # Convert SCSS to SASS $ sass-convert style.scss style.sass # Convert Sass to SCSS $ sass-convert style.sass style.scss Selectors { : ;
} { : ;
} body color #ddd body main color #fff This is how the CSS passage above can be written in SCSS: { : ;

  .main { : ;
  }
} body color #ddd color #fff SCSS structure is more similar to the DOM structure. This helps write CSS in a more efficient way. We can refer to the parent selector: { : ;

  &:hover { : ;
  } .main color #fff color #aaa It will be replaced by a parent selector and compiled in the following: { : ;
} { : ;
}
} .main color #fff .main :hover color #aaa SASS Variables & CSS Custom Properties CSS variables One of the greatest advantages of the native CSS Variables is that they live in your latest browser (starting with browsers 2015 years, not supported by the lovely IE 9/10 :D). They are fully accessible. You can inspect them, and, maybe most importantly, manipulate them using JavaScript. Properties { : Roboto; : ; : ;
} :root --font-family --text-size 1rem --font-color #000 SCSS variables SCSS variables start with a character. $ $ : 30 ;
$ : ; { : $width; : $color;
} width px color #fff body h1 width color This will be compiled in the following: { : ; : red;
} body h1 width 10px color SCSS Variables are only available inside the nested selector level where they are declared. If you want a variable to be available outside the scope, you need to add property: !global body { : rem !global;
  width: $width;
}

footer { : $width;
} $width 5 width SCSS & CSS Variables :root {
  --font-family: Roboto;
  --text-size: rem;
  --font-color: # ;
  --width: px;
}

$font-size: (--text-size);
$width: (--width);
body {
  font-size: $font-size;
  width: $width;
}

footer { : $width;
} 1 000 30 var var width Insert: #{} You can use variables in the properties of names and values using . #{} $name: bar;
$attr: background;
main.#{$name} {
  #{$attr}-color: #fff;
} This compiles in the following: main.bar {
  background-color: #fff;
} Imports @ foo” screen; @ screen; @ , screen; import "foo.css”; //import foo.css
@import " //import foo.scss import "foo.scss" //import foo.scss import "foo" "bar" //import foo.scss и bar scss Attached import If is included as described below: foo.scss .title { : #aaa;
} color Then we can import this file to another SCSS construction: body {
  background-color: #fff;

  main { : # ;

    @ ;
  }
} color 000 import "foo" This will compile to: body {
  background-color: #fff;
}

body main { : # ;
}

body main .title { : #aaa;
} color 000 color Mixins Mixins allow you to define styles that can be reused throughout the style sheet. You can think of mixins as functions in any other programming language. You can pass variables as well as functions in any other programming language. In SASS, mixins return a set of CSS rules. You can use syntax’s as follows: the syntax name defined by the directive mixin see the example below: @include @mixin -color { : # a0dab;
}

h1 {
  @include -color;
  padding: px;
} default color 1 default 10 This compiles in the following: h1 { : # a0dab;
  padding: px;
} color 1 10 You can also use composite mixins as demonstrated in the example below: @mixin -height { : px;
}

@mixin -width { : px;
}

@mixin -border { : px dashed;
}

.small-container {
  @include -width;
  @include -height;
  @include -border;
} default height 20 default width 40 default border 2 default default default Control Directives Are you familiar with the SASS control directives? These control directives include , , , and . How do they function in SASS? @if @for @each @while @if directive The directive takes a SASS expression and executes the block of styles beneath the directive if the evaluation of the expression does not return false or null. Let’s use a simple example to explain this: @if p {
  @ ( + == ) { : #fff;
  }
  @ ( ) {
    font-size: px;
  }
  @ ( > ) { : $ff00ff;
  }
  @ ( ) {
    font-size: px;
  }
} if 2 2 4 color if true 16 if 1 4 color if false 24 This will compile to the following: p { : #fff;
  font-size: px;
} color 16 The first two expressions are evaluated to be true, so the styles are added, while the other two are evaluated as false, hence their styles are not added. If the expression is not true, there are other options beyond . You can go with if and statements in this case. So if the statement fails, the if statements will be executed until one succeeds or the @else is reached. @if @else @else @if @else @mixin titleSetting($size) {
  @ ($size == large) {
    font-size: px;
  } @ ($size == medium) {
    font-size: px;
  } @ ($size == small) {
    font-size: px;
  } @ {
    font-size: px;
  }
}h1 {
  @include titleSetting(large);
}
h2 {
  @include titleSetting(medium);
}
p {
  @include hetitleSettingading(hi);
} if 32 else if 24 else if 18 else 16 This will compile to the following: h1 {
  font-size: px;
}

h2 {
  font-size: px;
}

p {
  font-size: px;
} 32 24 16 @for directive The directive is used to output styles in a loop. This loop has a start and end value. The example below will make it clearer: @for @ $i through {
  .legend-#{$i} { : ( * $i)px;
  }
} for from 1 5 width 10 This will compile to the following: .legend { : px;
}

.legend { : px;
}

.legend { : px;
}

.legend { : px;
}

.legend { : px;
} -1 width 10 -2 width 20 -3 width 30 -4 width 40 -5 width 50 @each directive The directive is used for looping instead of starting and ending values as in the case of directive. @each @for The syntax for — , where can be the name of any variable like . @each $var $var $name @each $section center, start, end {
  .section-#{$section} { : grid;
    justify-content: #{$place};
  }
} in display This will compile to the following: .section-center { : grid;
  justify-content: center;
}

.section-start { : grid;
  justify-content: start;
}

.section-end { : grid;
  justify-content: end;
} display display display @while directive The directive takes an expression and executes the nested block of styles as long as the expression is not evaluated as false. It is similar to the directive but it can be used to execute much more complex loops compared to the ones that the directive is capable of. @while @for @for If the directive is applied, a variable with a set value is used instead of a range of values. Let’s repeat our directive example using : @while @for @while $i: ;
@ $i < {
  .legend-#{$i} { : ( * $i)px;
  }
  $i: $i + ;
} 1 while 5 width 10 1 Let’s read the code written above: “ the variable is not greater than , execute the nested block of styles”. This value is increased within the nested block of styles until it is no longer less than 5, which is the condition for it to return false, and then it stops. while $1 5 This will compile to the following: .legend { : px;
}

.legend { : px;
}

.legend { : px;
}

.legend { : px;
} -1 width 10 -2 width 20 -3 width 30 -4 width 40 : When using the directive, remember that the loop will run forever if you don’t provide a condition for failure. In our example, we repeatedly increased the value of so the condition was set to return false at some point. Note @while $i Conclusions Using SASS extension will help you save a lot of time, automate a lot of your routine work and reuse your custom rules many times. Knowledge of the directives described in this article will make your rules more concise and enable you to have a clear style that is easy to understand for other developers (and yourself, too!). How to Install SASS? Use to access the SASS documentation. Sources of SASS are available . CSS's variables can be found . . this link here here Also published at blog.maddevs.io

How to Make Better Use of SASS Extensions for Custom CSS Variables

If you start using Sass, you never want to write CSS by hand again. If you're new to frontend development like me, maybe you heard or read that, but what is Sass, and is it really that amazing? Sass (short for syntactically awesome style sheets) is a preprocessor scripting language that is interpreted or compiled into Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). The indented syntax and SCSS files are traditionally given the extensions .sass and .scss, respectively.  (Wikipedia, n.d.). In other words, it is a program that takes one data type (Sass) and converts it to another data type (CSS) and is fully compatible with all versions of CSS. When I started to get comfortable using CSS, things started to get complicated and the stylesheets got longer and longer, and to be honest, it sometimes feels like a mess. So I tried Sass and enjoyed it. It is very similar to CSS but is easier to write, and I don't have to repeat myself as the principle (DRY) advice. Some of the principal features are: Variables let you store information that you want to reuse throughout your stylesheet. You can store things like colors, fonts, etc. Nesting in Sass will allow you to nest your CSS selectors in a way that follows a visual hierarchy, it's simple and useful, and you can use the “&” character to get a reference of the parent selector. But you should be careful that excess nested rules will result in overly qualified CSS which is a bad practice. Partials in Sass will allow you to create small Sass files that you can include in other Sass files. Thanks to the @import rule, a partial is created by naming it with an underscore: _buttons.scss. This is a great way to keep your code tidy. Mixes (reusable style blocks) A mixin allows you to make groups of CSS statements that you want to reuse throughout your code. In conclusion, Sass is amazing it is the evolution of CSS and will make your life easier,  you don’t need to know Ruby or be an expert in the command line to use it, you only need an extension like  VSCode Extension (Live Sass Compiler) that help you to compile your Sass/Scss files to CSS files. But if you are still learning CSS, it is better to wait a bit until you understand the basics of CSS. There are other preprocessors like LESS, Stylus, but at the moment, Sass is the most popular. References The Sass website (2020). Retrieved from https://sass-lang.com/ Sass (stylesheet language) -Wikipedia (n.d.). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sass_(stylesheet_language) Live Sass Compiler (2020). Retrieved from https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ritwickdey.live-sass

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