ESE Revision Topics Fall 2024 PDF

Unit 5 Cloud Security, Risks and Economics  Security in Cloud Computing  Security is an important aspect to be considered in the cloud computing environment.  Subsequent sections talk about data security; virtualization security; security issues in Software as a Service (SaaS), Infr...

Unit 5 Cloud Security, Risks and Economics  Security in Cloud Computing  Security is an important aspect to be considered in the cloud computing environment.  Subsequent sections talk about data security; virtualization security; security issues in Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS) models; etc.  Privacy challenges and identity and access management issues in cloud are also discussed in this Unit.  Security Aspects Security concerns in the cloud are not that different from non- cloud service offerings although they are exasperated— because in a single-tenant, non-cloud environment, you generally know where information is and how it is being kept. There are many different customers and there is no mechanism followed to isolate each other’s data. Cloud computing places business data into the hands of an outside provider and makes regulatory compliance inherently riskier and more complex than it is when systems are maintained in-house. Loss of direct oversight means that the client company must  Data Security Due to huge infrastructure, cost organizations are slowly switching to cloud technology. Data are stored in the CSP’s infrastructure. As data do not reside in organization territory, many complex challenges arise. Some of the complex data security challenges in cloud include the following.  The need to protect confidential business, government, or regulatory data.  Cloud service models with multiple tenants sharing the same infrastructure.  Data mobility and legal issues relative to such government  Data Security  Lack of standards about how CSPs securely recycle disk space and erase existing data.  Auditing, reporting, and compliance concerns.  Loss of visibility to key security and operational intelligence that no longer is available to feed enterprise IT security intelligence and risk management.  A new type of insider who does not even work for your company but may have control and visibility into your data.  Data Security Such issues raise the level of anxiety about security risks in the cloud. Enterprises worry whether they can trust their employees or need to implement additional internal controls in the private cloud and whether third-party providers can provide adequate protection in multitenant environments that may also store competitor data. There is also an ongoing concern about the safety of moving data between the enterprise and the cloud, as well as how to ensure that no residual data remnants remain upon moving to another CSP. Unquestionably, virtualized environments and the private cloud involve new challenges in securing data, mixed trust levels, and the potential weakening of separation of duties and  Data Center Security i. Data are stored in outside territory of the user in a location called as data center, which is unknown to the user. As the location of the data center is unknown to the user, it becomes a virtual data center. ii. The backbone of this virtual data center is virtual infrastructure, or the virtual machine (VM); however, virtual platforms are dependent on many other, often forgotten components of both the physical and virtual data centers. iii. There are typically seven areas of concern that accompany any major virtual platform implementation or migration. iv. Often, these issues are not seen during staging and testing and only appear when the VMs take on the same amount of load as physical machines. The critical points represent two  Data Center Security i. Lack of performance and availability ii. Lack of application awareness iii. Additional, unanticipated costs iv. Unused virtualization features v. Congested storage network vi. Management complexity  Network Security Cloud is based on networking of many things together like the network of infrastructure. While the network is the backbone of the cloud, many challenges are encountered in this network. Some of the challenges in the existing cloud networks are discussed in the following.  Application performance  Flexible deployment of appliances  Policy enforcement complexities  Topology-dependent complexity  Application rewriting  Location dependency  Multilayer network complexity  Platform-as-a-Service Security Issues 1. PaaS provides a ready-to-use platform, including OS that runs on vendor-provided infrastructure. As the infrastructure is of the CSP, various security challenges of the focused architecture are caused mainly by the spread of the user objects over the hosts of the cloud. 2. Stringently allowing access of objects to the resources and defending the objects against malicious or corrupt providers reasonably reduce possible risks. 3. Network access and service measurement bring together concerns about secure communications and access control. Well-known practices, object scale enforcement of authorization, and undeniable traceability methods may alleviate the concerns.  Infrastructure-as-a-Service Security Issues Cloud computing makes a lot of promises in the areas of increased flexibility and agility, potential cost savings, and competitive advantages for developers so that they can stand up an infrastructure quickly and efficiently to enable them to develop the software to drive business success. There are a lot of problems that cloud, especially private cloud, solves, but it is not that much good in solving problems related to security. i. Hypervisor security. ii. Multitenancy. iii. Identity management and access control (IdAM). iv. Network security  Audit and Compliance 1. It is a widely known fact that data protection and regulatory compliance are among the top security concerns for chief information officers (CIOs) of any organization. 2. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, an overwhelming majority of users of cloud computing services expressed serious concern about the possibility of a service provider disclosing their data to others. 3. Ninety percent of cloud application users said that they would be very concerned if the company at which their data were stored sold them to another party.  Audit and Compliance 4. A survey conducted by many firms expressed the view that security is the biggest challenge for the cloud computing model. 5. Stakeholders, therefore, increasingly feel the need to prevent data breaches. In recent months, many newspaper articles have revealed data leaks in sensitive areas such as the financial and governmental domains and web community. 6. One of the missions of the data protection authorities is to prevent the so-called Big Brother phenomenon, which refers to a scenario whereby a public authority processes personal data without adequate privacy protection. In such a  Audit and Compliance 7. One of the missions of the data protection authorities is to prevent the so-called Big Brother phenomenon, which refers to a scenario whereby a public authority processes personal data without adequate privacy protection. In such a situation, end users may view the cloud as a vehicle for drifting into a totalitarian surveillance society. 8. The specificities of cloud computing, therefore, make the data protection incentive even greater. For example, the cloud provider should provide encryption to protect the stored personal data against unauthorized access, copy, leakage, or processing.  Audit and Compliance 9. In a cloud environment, companies have no control over their data, which, being entrusted to third-party application service providers in the cloud, could now reside anywhere in the world. 10.Nor will a company know in which country its data reside at any given point in time. 11.This is a central issue of cloud computing that conflicts with the EU requirements whereby a company must at all times know where the personal data in its possession are being transferred to. 12.Cloud computing thus poses special problems for multinationals with specific EU customers.  Privacy and Integrity The promise to deliver IT as a service is addressed to a large range of consumers, from small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and public administrations to end users. Users are creating an ever-growing quantity of personal data. 1. Complexity of risk assessment in a cloud environment: The complexity of cloud services introduces a number of unknown parameters. Service providers and consumers are cautious about offering guarantees for compliance-ready services and adopting the services. With service providers promoting a simple way to flow personal data irrespective of national boundaries, a real challenge arises in terms of checking the data processing life cycle  Privacy and Integrity 2. Emergence of new business models and their implications for consumer privacy: A report by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Protecting consumer privacy in an era of rapid change analyzes the implications for consumer privacy of technological advances in the IT sphere. According to the FTC, users are able to collect, store, manipulate, and share vast amounts of consumer data for very little cost. These technological advances have led to an explosion of new business models that depend on capturing consumer data at a specific and individual level and over time, including profiling, online behavioral advertising (OBA), social media services, and  Disaster Recovery 1. Simple data backup as well as more comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity planning is an essential part of business and personal life. 2. Backup as a Service and Disaster Recovery as a Service is now available online through the cloud for every level of user, from personal, small business to large enterprise data storage and retrieval, either publicly through the Internet or via more secure dedicated access methods. 3. As a result, traditional methods are becoming obsolete.  Disaster Recovery A few of the advantages include the following: 1. No huge upfront costs for capital investment or infrastructure management or black boxes. 2. Backups are physically stored in a different location from the original source of your data. 3. Remote backup does not require user intervention or periodic manual backups. 4. Unlimited data retention. You can get as much or as little data storage space as you need. 5. Backups are automatic and smart. They occur continuously and efficiently back up your files only as the data change.  Disaster Recovery Cloud computing, based on virtualization, takes a very different approach to disaster recovery. With virtualization, the entire server, including the OS, applications, patches, and data, is encapsulated into a single software bundle or virtual server. This entire virtual server can be copied or backed up to an offsite data center and spun up on a virtual host in a matter of minutes.  Disaster Recovery Since the virtual server is hardware independent, the OS, applications, patches, and data can be safely and accurately transferred from one data center to a second data center without the burden of reloading each component of the server. This can dramatically reduce recovery times compared to conventional (non-virtualized) disaster recovery approaches where servers need to be loaded with the OS and application software and patched to the last configuration used in production before the data can be restored Thank You