How ships cross the Panama Canal

 

The Panama Canal is an incredible waterway that connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Around 13,000 ships make this journey each year, crossing the canal and saving time and money. Let's explore how ships navigate through the canal, overcoming a height difference and using locks like giant stairs.

• The Lock System:

The Panama Canal uses locks to help ships move up and down the canal. These locks are like big chambers that act as steps. Ships have to pass through three sets of locks during their transit. It's these locks that make the canal possible.

• The Transit Process:

When a ship enters the first lock's chamber, the gates close behind it. Then, the sluice is opened, and something amazing happens. Gravity helps the water flow from the higher chamber to the lower one. This equalizes the water levels and allows the ship to move forward. The ship repeats this process until it passes through all the locks.

• Saving Time:

Transiting the Panama Canal takes about 8 to 10 hours. It's a well-managed and efficient process. Ship arrivals and departures are carefully scheduled to make the most of the canal's capacity and minimize delays. The canal's operators work hard to ensure a smooth and timely journey for ships.

• Boosting Global Trade:

The Panama Canal plays a vital role in international trade. Using the canal allows ships to take shorter routes and save valuable time and money. It has revolutionized shipping, making it faster and more efficient. In 2016, the canal expanded to accommodate larger vessels, further improving its importance in global trade.

Conclusion:

The Panama Canal is a remarkable achievement of human engineering. Ships worldwide pass through its locks, crossing the heights and connecting two major oceans. It has transformed global trade, making it faster, more accessible, and economical. As ships sail through the Panama Canal, they are witnesses to human ingenuity and the power to overcome challenges.

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Gartner Releases the Hype Cycle for Cloud Security in 2017

Analysts Will Discuss Cloud Security at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summits in London and Dubai

Rapid growth in cloud adoption is driving increased interest in securing data, applications and workloads that now exist in a cloud computing environment. The Gartner, Inc. Hype Cycle for Cloud Security helps security professionals understand which technologies are ready for mainstream use, and which are still years away from productive deployments for most organizations (see Figure 1.)

"Security continues to be the most commonly cited reason for avoiding the use of public cloud," said Jay Heiser, research vice president at Gartner. "Yet paradoxically, the organizations already using the public cloud consider security to be one of the primary benefits."

The attack resistance of the majority of cloud service providers has not proven to be a major weakness so far, but customers of these services may not know how to use them securely. "The Hype Cycle can help cybersecurity professionals identify the most important new mechanisms to help their organizations make controlled, compliant and economical use of the public cloud," added Mr. Heiser.

Figure 1. Hype Cycle for Cloud Security, 2017

Source: Gartner (September 2017)

At the PeakThe peak of inflated expectations is a phase of overenthusiasm and unrealistic projections, where the hype is not matched by successful deployments in mainstream use. This year the technologies at the peak include data loss protection for mobile devices, key management as-a-service and software-defined perimeter. Gartner expects all of these technologies will take at least five years to reach productive mainstream adoption.

In the Trough
When a technology does not live up to the hype of the peak of inflated expectations, it becomes unfashionable and moves along the cycle to the trough of disillusionment. There are two technologies in this section that Gartner expects to achieve mainstream adoption in the next two years:

Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) is in the early stages of maturity, with around 20-50 percent market penetration. Early adopters are typically smaller organizations with fewer than 100 employees, which lacked a recovery data center, experienced IT staff and specialized skills needed to manage a DR program on their own.

Private cloud computing is used when organizations want to the benefits of public cloud — such as IT agility to drive business value and growth — but aren’t able to find cloud services that meet their needs in terms of regulatory requirements, functionality or intellectual property protection. The use of third-party specialists for building private clouds is growing rapidly because the cost and complexity of building a true private cloud can be high.

On the SlopeThe slope of enlightenment is where experimentation and hard work with new technologies are beginning to pay off in an increasingly diverse range of organizations. There are currently two technologies on the slope that Gartner expects to fully mature within the next two years:

Data loss protection (DLP) is perceived as an effective way to prevent accidental disclosure of regulated information and intellectual property. In practice, it has proved more useful in helping identify undocumented or broken business processes that lead to accidental data disclosures, and providing education on policies and procedures. Organizations with realistic expectations find this technology significantly reduces unintentional leakage of sensitive data. It is relatively easy, however, for a determined insider or motivated outsider to circumvent.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) container encryption is a way for organizations to protect their data held with cloud providers. It’s a similar approach to encrypting a hard drive on a laptop, but it is applied to the data from an entire process or application held in the cloud. This is likely to become an expected feature offered by a cloud provider and indeed Amazon already provides its own free offering, while Microsoft supports free BitLocker and DMcrypt tools for Linux.

Reached the PlateauFour technologies have reached the plateau of productivity, meaning the real-world benefits of the technology have been demonstrated and accepted. Tokenization, high-assurance hypervisors and application security as a service have all moved up to the plateau, joining identity-proofing services which was the only entrant remaining from last year’s plateau.

"Understanding the relative maturity and effectiveness of new cloud security technologies and services will help security professionals reorient their role toward business enablement," said Mr. Heiser. "This means helping an organization’s IT users to procure, access and manage cloud services for their own needs in a secure and efficient way."

Gartner clients can read full analysis on the technologies in this Hype Cycle in "Hype Cycle for Cloud Security, 2017." This research is part of the Gartner Trend Insight Report "2017 Hype Cycles Highlight Enterprise and Ecosystem Digital Disruptions." With over 1,800 profiles of technologies, services and disciplines spanning over 100 Hype Cycles focused on a diversity of regions, industries and roles, this Trend Insight Report is designed to help CIOs and IT leaders respond to the opportunities and threats affecting their businesses, take the lead in technology-enabled business innovations and help their organizations define an effective digital business strategy.

Gartner analysts will provide additional analysis on IT security trends at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summits 2017 taking place in London; and Dubai. Follow news and updates from the events on Twitter at #GartnerSEC.

Contacts

• Rob van der Meulen
• Gartner
• rob.vandermeulen@gartner.com

• Christy Pettey
• Gartner
• christy.pettey@gartner.com