What's a Better Ransomware Hostage, Supercomputing or Production Cycles?

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Data Science insights are at the forefront of market innovation; neural networks have become a means of survival as Blue Chips look to develop wealth-preservation strategies. Deep-tech plays deploying AI/ML neural nets onto High Performance Computing (HPC) assets are have become ubiquitous and the benefits of this marriage are obvious; organizations are able to streamline forecasting models, go-to-market strategy, supply-chain logistics, workload efficiency, reflective analysis – there are virtually endless relevant applications for AI/ML/HPC. Because of their broad utility, they are becoming ubiquitous as on and off premises compute resources are integrated for hybrid support. A highly valuable, expensive, critical piece of business infrastructure and strategy, connected to the internet for anyone to potentially gain access and control over...? Eerily similar to manufacturing, no?

These gains in efficiency are so substantial and pervasive it has caused a global paradigm shift of budgeting and data strategy as organizations and businesses across all verticals look to modernize. According to Hyperion Research, for every $1 invested in HPC, $44 is returned in profit on average, opening the floodgates of IT investment. This rapid growth comes with rapidly changing environments, and predators.

The growth of HPC has been so prolific it has substantially affected supportive industries within the IT vertical; climate change, chip and hardware manufacturing supply chains, and cyber warfare/crime have all emerged as challenges borne from geopolitics. Data analysis is the weapon of choice for the tech market cap arms-race. Like prying open an oyster to find a pearl, what was once unassailable complexity has been rendered defenseless against data scientists armed with HPC. Everyone wants their oyster, but what else is lurking below?

The convenience of a public cloud comes with exploitable threat surfaces, a non-starter for those with robust security compliance postures. For those security-minded clients, is there a good alternative that offers cloud functionality but without the risk of exposing sensitive data to threat actors? How do air gapped HPC applications modernize their infrastructure without compromising their data?

The tedious and delicate process of manually configuring HPC infrastructure makes cloud automation an attractive solution for those precise reasons, but data security concerns, sticky dev environments, and bandwidth fees make that a pipe dream for sensitive HPC endeavors. As HPC applications need tweaks and tunes, the value-add of new functionality is measured in contrast with quantitative analysis of downtime and implementation costs. Now, organizations must consider how much risk they really want to assume if they fall within the parameters of an ideal victim profile for RaaS.

The market pressure to streamline maneuverability of on premises HPC infrastructure without sacrificing security and confidentiality is relieved by the emergence of NetThunder’s private cloud platform. Autonomous deployment happens within calendar minutes, and recovery is performed easily with deterministically calculated configuration, meaning it can reproduce exact replicas of an infrastructure – ultimately, flexible infrastructure like that of a CSP.

NetThunder provides a solution for on premises HPC where strategic and financial discussions have centered around concerns of configuration timelines, change-management challenges, and/or generally looking for practical network solutions for maintaining a secure air gap. As NetThunder's modules are deployed to streamline configuration of on premises infrastructure, those organizations can breathe a sigh of relief as their sensitive networks get placed behind air gaps, and can look to the future as network flexibility becomes automated, freeing IT teams to focus on other projects.

The Storm module, an on premises private cloud platform aimed at HPC-scale deployment, transforms network agility with its proprietary out-of-band autointegration orchestration. Through deployment onto bare-metal, the controller is able to track all resources in the database and identify all dependencies. Infrastructure can be built, torn down, and rebuilt at a whim and within minutes instead of months through dependency-resolution. Instances of HPC applications requiring or desiring an air gap need look no further than Storm, designed to deploy itself autonomously without connection to the internet. It has the same change-management and flexibility as cloud but without the risk of cloud threat surfaces. Empowered by automation, infrastructure can be recomposed with a button-press for powerful change-management capabilities. Protected by the air gap, monitoring the electronic perimeter and securing sensitive networks is simplified – removing the headaches of security audits.