January 2023 Summaries

You can learn about DigitalOcean's developer content, tutorials and resources to help developers build and maintain their applications and infrastructure using their products and services. The company has published thousands of tutorials over the last decade covering various topics such as cloud computing, OAuth 2, and more. To make it easier for developers to find and utilize this content, DigitalOcean is launching the Developer Center, a curated experience that brings together all of its disparate content into one unified platform. The center will provide a range of resources, including guides, tutorials, and demos, to help developers learn, upskill, scale, and get in front of their audiences faster using DigitalOcean products such as Droplets, Managed Databases, and App Platform.

A shift-left approach to security, where security teams insert security activities earlier in developer workflows, is not producing meaningful results for many organizations. This approach puts the onus of security management on developers without providing guidance or resources to support self-service. In contrast, a developer-first security program focuses on contextual injections of security designs into the environment, integrating into existing development workflows and solving real business problems. Such programs require significant cultural shifts within both engineering and security teams, aiming to provide a paved path for security that makes it easier for developers to deploy their pipelines while embedding security into the speed and scale of modern development team lifecycles.

DigitalOcean aims to simplify cloud computing by providing a wide range of SDKs in various programming languages, allowing developers to interact with their DigitalOcean resources more easily. The company has recently released a new Python Client, PyDo, which is generated using the OpenAPI Specification initiative and the Autorest toolchain. This allows for automated code generation, continuous integration, and improved user experience. Key features of the PyDo client include directives that can be used to customize the generated code, patch customizations, and automated testing and documentation. The client's workflow involves a GitHub Actions pipeline that triggers code generation and updates the client whenever changes are made to the OpenAPI Specification.

DigitalOcean's Hatch program is a global initiative that supports startups by offering infrastructure credits, support, and a community of fellow builders. Ourspace, the January 2023 startup of the month, has raised $2.5 million in funding and utilizes DigitalOcean's Hatch program to build, test, and deploy its team-focused product. Ourspace chose DigitalOcean for its simplicity and ease of use, which allowed them to focus on building features rather than configuring cloud infrastructure. The Hatch program provides startups with the resources they need to experiment with different products and plan their future infrastructure. With DigitalOcean's intuitive products and cost-effective pricing, Ourspace has been able to worry less about cloud infrastructure and more about business strategy, enabling them to make a strategic pivot in the current downturn economy.

DigitalOcean launched its DO Impact initiative at the NYSE in April, a celebration and commitment to developing its philanthropy strategy. Despite an economically challenging year, DigitalOcean remained committed to giving over $1.1M to more than 900 organizations in 2022 through cash grants, donations, and employee contributions. The company surpassed 2,200 nonprofit organizations using DigitalOcean with the support of infrastructure credits via Hollie's Hub for Good. DigitalOcean engaged with partners like UNICEF and Fast Forward, hosted successful employee giving campaigns, and launched skills-based volunteering pilots. The company was recognized at the DevRel Awards and joined its Pledge 1% community to celebrate Giving Tuesday. With a focus on continued action in 2023, DigitalOcean is excited to take even more impactful steps.

Monitoring web assets and Droplets/virtual machines is crucial for businesses to mitigate risks, reduce downtime, and maintain customer satisfaction. Downtime can result in significant revenue loss, lost customers, and damage to credibility. By implementing monitoring tools, businesses can focus on scaling their operations instead of addressing individual issues, improve customer relations, and retain clients through improved satisfaction levels. Monitoring also helps ensure website security, performance, and quality, while integrating with various services such as Cloudflare and messaging platforms like Slack and Discord. A comprehensive tool that monitors both the site and virtual machine provides valuable insights into potential problems before they occur, enabling swift action to be taken. By investing in monitoring, businesses can protect their reputation, reduce costs, and maintain a competitive edge.

Gabe Monroy announces that DigitalOcean has acquired SnapShooter, a backup and recovery solutions provider. This acquisition aims to better enable startups and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to protect their cloud data across files, apps, and databases. SnapShooter makes cloud backups simple, fast, and flexible, offering one system to consolidate all backups, giving users peace of mind knowing their cloud data is protected. The solution supports popular apps such as Laravel and WordPress, and databases including MongoDB, MySQL, and PostgreSQL, allowing users to back up files, servers, apps, and databases from multiple providers. SnapShooter offers granular backups with the ability to choose what files to back up, customizable settings, flexible retention policies, real-time logs and monitoring, 2-factor authentication, secure encryption, and storage options. DigitalOcean users can benefit from a 1-Click Application that makes it simple to add SnapShooter backups to DigitalOcean products.

DigitalOcean provides several ways to improve the security of your account, starting with enabling multi-factor authentication, which prevents unauthorized access even if the password is compromised. Additionally, using TOTP codes as a secondary factor is recommended for added security. You should also take advantage of OAuth-based login partnerships with Google and GitHub to delegate authentication. Furthermore, regularly check your security history for suspicious activity, review team membership, and regenerate API tokens and Spaces access key secrets as needed to enhance account security.