Google Cloud is now able to store all your secrets

Google Cloud has announced a new tool aimed at helping users securely store their API keys, passwords, certificates and other data online.

Secret Manager provides the company's customers with a single tool to manage their data as well as a centralized source of truth.

In a blog post announcing the new tool, Google developer advocate Seth Vargo and product manager Matt Driscoll provided further insight on the kinds of problems Secret Manager will help solve, saying:

“Many applications require credentials to connect to a database, API keys to invoke a service, or certificates for authentication. Managing and securing access to these secrets is often complicated by secret sprawl, poor visibility, or lack of integrations.”

Secret Manager

Google already provides an open-source command-line tool for managing secrets called Berglas. With the launch of Secret Manager, both tools will work together and users will even be able to move their secrets from the open-source tool to Secret Manager. Berglas can also be used to create and access secrets from Secret Manager.

Google's Key Management Service (KMS) provides users with a fully managed system to handle their keys. However, KMS does not actually store the secrets but instead encrypts the secrets you store elsewhere. Secret Manager on the other hand, provides users with a way to easily store and manage these secrets in Google Cloud.

Secret Manager includes the tools needed to manage secret versions and audit logging. The secrets stored in the tool are also project-based global resources which sets it apart from competing tools which often manage secrets on a regional basis.

Google Cloud customers can begin using Secret Manager today as the new tool is currently in beta and available to all.

Via TechCrunch

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Looking for Google Pixel 4 deals? These EE tariffs blow everything else away right now

The Google Pixel 4, the latest phone from the search engine giant, has been around for a good few months now. In that time we've seen prices shoot up, down, left, right and just about every direction imaginable but now, costs seem to have settled…at least for one network.

Currently, the EE network seems to have secured all of the cheapest Google Pixel 4 deals. That means currently there are options ranging from £23 a month (with lots of upfront costs, of course) through to free upfront plans on EE giving you plenty of choice.

However, when there is so much choice, picking the perfect plan can be daunting. That's why we've analysed a heap of Pixel 4 plans and picked out the top three available on EE right now.

We've listed these three plans below so you can find your perfect contract. And if you find them all lacking in the data department, try this 100GB data Three plan out for size.

The Google Pixel 4 offers a number of innovative features and major upgrades. It's the first phone to fully implement motion sense features, allowing you to use the phone with gestures.

The processor has gotten a major upgrade, finally bringing the Pixel range up to competitive standards of RAM, and the OLED screen has seen major improvements, now capable of 90HZ refresh rates and offering ambient EQ technology that lets you adjust the screen to your environment.

Read our full Google Pixel 4 review and Pixel 4 XL review

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Google makes datasets easier to find online

Researchers and academics searching for datasets online will now have an easier time doing so as Google's Dataset Search is now out of beta and includes new tools to better filter searches with access to close to 25m datasets.

Dataset Search first launched in 2018 as part of the company's goal to put an end to the fragmentation of open-access data. 

While many universities, governments and labs publish their data online, it is often difficult to find using traditional search engines. However, by adding open source metadata tags to their web pages, these groups can have their data indexed by Google's Dataset Search.

Although the search giant did not share an specific usage figures for Dataset Search, the company says that “hundreds of thousands of users” have tried it out since its launch and that the tool has received positive support from the scientific community.

Dataset Search

The Verge spoke with a research scientist at Google AI who helped create the tool named Natasha Noy who said that “most [data] repositories have been very responsive” and that Dataset Search has even encouraged older scientific institutions to take “publishing metadata more seriously”.

Now that the tool is out of beta, Google has added new features to it including the ability to filter data by type (tables, images, text, etc), whether it is free to use and also the geographic area it covers. Dataset Search is also now available on mobile and it has expanded dataset descriptions.

According to Google, the tool's search engine covers almost 25m datasets, though this is only a “fraction of datasets on the web”. The largest topics indexed by Dataset Search include geosciences, biology and agriculture with education, weather, cancer, crime, soccer and dogs being the most common queries.

Making data available to users is what Google does best and the company plans to continue to add more datasets to Dataset Search.

Via The Verge

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