Briefings

This update of SHIFT improves the level of control you have over your emulation environment. Previously, SHIFT provided three modes of emulation: Strict, Diagnostic, and Development - which were not all available to every user. This update replaces those emulation modes with two toggles: "Allow Internet" and "Allow Commercial Endpoints" that are available for use to all SHIFT users. See below for details.

SHIFT is focused on helping its users create an emulation environment that is both customizable and extensible. With the addition of the "Allow Internet" toggle feature, all projects within SHIFT can now allow or deny internet traffic on-demand. Previously, when a SHIFT Project was set to Diagnostic mode, only Commercial AWS calls were allowed. With the new "Allow Commercial Endpoints" toggle enabled, SHIFT will handle AWS API calls to both Commercial and your target emulation regions at the same time.

• Why is this important? With this new release, we are fundamentally changing the way you configure your emulation environment. You now have more fine-grained control over when internet and Commercial AWS calls are allowed or disallowed in your environment, with the ability to toggle both at any time.
• How does it help? These new toggles allow for more combinations of scenarios for development and testing within the SHIFT platform. Enabling the toggle to allow Commercial AWS calls will configure SHIFT to handle AWS calls to both Commercial and your target emulation regions at the same time. See a couple examples below for context.

Allowing simultaneous calls to Commercial AWS and your target region will be useful in many scenarios. For example, making an application that has been developed in Commercial AWS ready for your target environment. You will be able to reconfigure the application in pieces to make it work in your target region. As you configure different elements or modules of the application and have them successfully make calls to your target region, the calls that have not yet been configured will still succeed within the environment. Using the SHIFT portal, you will then be able to see these remaining items that need attention, and work to fully reconfigure or design the application for your target region.

Another example of when both of these toggles would be useful is when using SHIFT to train resources not only on AWS, but also on the nuances of the AWS Secret and Top Secret regions. Enabling the "Allow Internet" toggle would allow you to download any training resources from online code repositories. Enabling the "Allow Commercial Endpoints" toggle would allow the trainees to make calls to Commercial AWS and your target region and do side by side comparisons to learn the differences between the environments.

For more information, please reach out to SHIFT@digitalageexperts.com to see how this new capability can benefit you and your team!