Speaker

Joonas Westlin

Joonas Westlin

Azure Architect/Developer and Azure MVP at Zure Ltd

Helsinki, Finland

Joonas has been working with Microsoft technologies as a hobby since the first version of .NET framework. Currently he works as a software developer at Zure, a company specializing in developing software on Microsoft Azure using its PaaS offerings. He is one of the 7 Azure MVPs in Finland. Joonas is currently the global #1 for Azure AD answers on Stack Overflow (and #7 for Azure overall).

Awards

Area of Expertise

  • Information & Communications Technology

Topics

  • Microsoft Azure
  • Azure Security
  • Azure Active Directory
  • Azure App Service
  • ASP.NET Core
  • Azure Functions
  • Azure CosmosDB
  • Azure PaaS

Securing a modern Web application with Entra ID

Adding OpenID Connect/OAuth authentication to a modern Web application can be hard. The authentication protocols are not simple. And some of the quirks of Entra ID don't make it any easier.

In this presentation, we will walk through what happens when you authenticate to a Web application using Entra ID authentication. Then we will add Entra ID authentication to a front-end single page application and its back-end API.
We will look at how to configure the Microsoft authentication libraries on both ends and what the critical settings are.

Building a multi-tenant IoT data processing solution on Azure

Azure offers plenty of services for building Internet of Things solutions. Using them to build a highly scalable, multi-tenant solution presents many challenges however. How do you prevent one tenant from hogging all the resources? How do you deploy updates to the edge devices? How do you expand the solution to global scale? What do you do when your central data storage service gets deprecated?

In this presentation we will go through a real solution that our team implemented, the challenges we faced, and how we solved them. We will look at the basics of Azure IoT Edge, IoT Hubs, Event Hubs, and Azure Data Explorer.

Avoiding absolutism in software development, experiences working as a consultant

Do not let perfect be the enemy of good. This is something I often have to repeat to myself and our customers. Typically it is best to come up with "good enough" solutions, instead of chasing perfection. As a consultant, I have worked with dozens of different organizations. Sometimes I meet people who push for perfection in security, processes, testing, user experience etc. While their purpose is the improvement of the solution, the value of going for perfection decreases as we go further. As our customers pay for the hours we work, I feel obligated to push back when someone tries to push for too much perfection. Sometimes the "quick and dirty" solution is the best solution, given the context.

Zero Credential Development with Managed Identities for Azure Resources

Keys are always needed to access services in Azure and beyond. Storing and managing keys presents many problems, for example rotating and disabling them. Keys often also allow blanket access to the service with no way to limit it. Sometimes there is only one key that needs to be shared by services, so you won't have any way to disable access from one individually.

In this talk we will go through Managed Identities for Azure Resources, how they work, and how you can use them to use Azure services in a secure way without having to manage any keys yourself. We will go through a demo application which uses various Azure services through a managed identity, removing the need to use keys entirely.

The source code will be available to the audience so they have samples that they can use to implement managed identities in their own applications.

Seriously securing an Azure PaaS application

What would it look like if we moved the security slider all the way to the max on an Azure PaaS application? If things like cost, developer productivity or ability to troubleshoot issues were not a problem, how far could we go? In this presentation, we are going to find out.

A sample application is shown running in Azure App Service that is connected to data sources like Azure Storage and Azure SQL Database. Private endpoints, Azure Front Door, Azure Key Vault and various other services are also used. At the end of the presentation, cheaper and more practical options are also shown. The sample application source code and other files will made available to the audience.

Using feature flags in an ASP.NET Core app on Azure

Larger features may take a long time to develop, but you still want to deploy production updates during development. Or maybe you want the users to be able to preview upcoming features? Either way, feature flags can resolve the issue.

In this presentation we take a look at using feature flags in an ASP.NET Core application running in Azure App Service. We use the Microsoft.FeatureManagement library to support both development-time feature flags and user-specific preview feature flags. The Azure App Configuration service's feature flag support is also explored. The sample application source code and other files will made available to the audience.

Real-time asset tracking with Azure: leveraging IoT, maps, and serverless technologies

Implementing high throughput event processing with Azure services presents many interesting challenges. A location tracking scenario adds its own challenges on top of those, such as dealing with coordinate systems and map services. Picking the right Azure services is important as is how they are configured and used.

In this talk we will look at a scenario that our team had to implement, the challenges it presented, and how we solved them using Azure services. We will go through a demo application that uses simulated GPS trackers and shows their real-time location on a map view. We will also look at possible optimizations and options.

In this talk we will look at the following Azure services: Event Hubs, Functions, SQL, Data Explorer, Maps, and SignalR Service.

CloudBrew 2022 - A two-day Microsoft Azure event Sessionize Event

November 2022 Mechelen, Belgium

CloudBurst 2022 Sessionize Event

October 2022 Stockholm, Sweden

Techorama Netherlands 2022 Sessionize Event

October 2022 Utrecht, The Netherlands

Techorama 2022 BE Sessionize Event

May 2022 Antwerpen, Belgium

Joonas Westlin

Azure Architect/Developer and Azure MVP at Zure Ltd

Helsinki, Finland