This post was inspired by a specific request for help from my wife’s co-worker. She works in the legal department of a privately held company as a Paralegal, the main focus of her work is interfacing with the IT department and assisting with their contracts. Vendor and service provider contracts are already complicated documents, then add on the fact that you are not familiar with Information Technology lingo. This can all add up to frustrating experience for all those involved. In my mind the solution to this problem is very simple but not always feasible. The “IT Guys” should take the time to help those around them understand the subject matter being discussed, but the reality of things it that IT workers are overworked and generally don’t have the time to do these type of things. So the next best option is to educate yourself on the topics you lack understanding in.
Once you go down the path of self research it can turn into a deep dark hole if you don’t have good idea of exactly what you are looking for. So the first step in you path should be to have a general understanding of how the internet works and how some of the more popular technologies are used in the enterprise world. Below are some links that should help you get started.
- How Internet Infrastructure Works This is a very well written breakdown of the basics of internet infrastructure and good for launching into more complex topics. It will also help you understand some of the basic concepts and terminology.
- What Is Networking Great breakdown of the basic hardware and principles of networking
- DATA CENTER 101 – THE BASICS For those that may deal with “Cloud” services on the regular will find this useful. Don’t let the marketing teams fool you, “The Cloud” is a data center and a Data Center is “The Cloud”.
- Networking 101: Understanding Tunneling This will get more into the nitty gritty of how Cloud services and your enterprise environment communicate. Some forms of tunneling will also add a layer of security to the transmission of data
- SOC 2 Report – Trust Services Principles Inevitably if you deal with Cloud service providers a SOC2 conversation will happen, if it doesn’t it should. Be prepared, sometimes knowing what isn’t being talked about is just as important as what is being talked about.
- Network Resources/Links Shameless plug for my own content here. This page contains wikipedia links to some basic networking terminology.
If you have more resources that you have found useful or people should know about please feel free to leave a comment or reach out to me via any of the Social Media platforms.