Even Westminster can’t escape the clutches of vendor lock-in in the cloud market.

Internal documents from the UK Cabinet Office’s Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) state the government’s “current approach to cloud adoption and management across its departments faces several challenges,” The Register recently reported.

Key risks created by this strategy include “risk concentration” and the possibility vendor lock-in will inhibit future efforts to negotiate fair prices for IT services, according to the analysis. The document singles out Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure in particular, noting they have “existing dominance” in UK government cloud spending.

As one example, The Register noted AWS has already landed deals with the government worth nine figures—with AWS raking in 76% more in contracts in fiscal year 2022/2023 compared to the year prior.

“This path forecasts a future where, within a decade, the public sector could face the end of its ability to negotiate favorable terms, leading to entrenched vendor lock-in and potential regulatory scrutiny from [UK regulator] the Competition and Markets Authority,” the CDDO warned in the document.

Read more here.—TM

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You’re already part of the Morning Brew community, but did you know you can also listen to and/or watch the wittiest and smartest takes on business news? Morning Brew Daily hosts Neal Freyman and Toby Howell have you covered on everything you need to know before your cup of coffee, from the latest headlines on the economy to explanations of viral TikTok trends. You’ll look so smart in front of your boss. New episodes are released every weekday at 7am ET. Check ’em out on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Whoa! Cool scar, CISO!

There’s a feeling among some security pros, including those who spoke to IT Brew, that a practitioner who’s been through the battle of breaches has the kind of crisis-management experience that’s valuable to a team, not one to run away from.

“The more battle-hardened individuals that we can bring to the table, the more likely we are to be successful in defending against those that would do us harm,” David Bradbury, chief security officer at the authentication provider Okta, said.

Move, move, move! Bradbury has seen a few cyber fights, with career experience in industries where malicious hackers lurk—previously at IBM and financial institutions, and now at Okta.

In the fall of 2023, Okta discovered unauthorized access to its customer-support system exposing names and email addresses across all customers using the system. In early 2022, Okta confirmed a security incident after the cybercriminal group Lapsus$ posted screenshots, claiming to illustrate applications in the vendor’s environment.

Read more here.—BH

Do you work in IT or have information about your IT department you want to share? Email [email protected].

Amidst an ongoing chip war between the US and China, investments in Mexico are making the country a hot destination for hardware manufacturing in the AI space. At the request of AI companies in the US, Taiwan-based companies are ramping up production efforts in Mexico, the Wall Street Journal reported March 31.

Three’s a crowd. A 2020 free-trade agreement between the US, Mexico, and Canada has brought in billions from manufacturing companies “aiming to move operations from China to Mexico,” the Journal also reported. The recent nearshoring efforts and investments into Mexico are beneficial to Taiwan, the US, and Mexico, according to Ryan Yonk, coauthor of The China Dilemma, who told IT Brew that “labor costs” and the “relative closeness to the United States,” in both a physical and governmental sense, make the country an attractive spot.

“A major part of why places like Mexico or China are attractive is that…while not the lowest labor cost that you can find in the world, [they offer] a combination of skilled workers and labor costs that are well below the manufacturing costs in the US,” he said. “Couple that with the regulatory environment and climate and suddenly, things are a lot more interesting for a Taiwanese company to operate [in Mexico].”

Keep reading here.—AF

Do you work in IT or have information about your IT department you want to share? Email [email protected].

SSO isn’t enough. More than two-thirds of security pros say SSO tools aren’t a complete solution to securing employee identity. And half say it’s almost impossible to balance security and productivity perfectly. 1Password’s State of Enterprise Security Report explores why business as usual is no longer an option. Read on.