Cloud Security

A Comprehensive Guide to Secure Cloud Computing

Ronald L. Krutz, Russell Dean Vines

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780470589878
• eBook ISBN: 9780470938942
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Cyber Security
• Index: Computer Science

Well-known security experts decipher the most challenging aspect of cloud computing-security

Cloud computing allows for both large and small organizations to have the opportunity to use Internet-based services so that they can reduce start-up costs, lower capital expenditures, use services on a pay-as-you-use basis, access applications only as needed, and quickly reduce or increase capacities. However, these benefits are accompanied by a myriad of security issues, and this valuable book tackles the most common security challenges that cloud computing faces.

The authors offer you years of unparalleled expertise and knowledge as they discuss the extremely challenging topics of data ownership, privacy protections, data mobility, quality of service and service levels, bandwidth costs, data protection, and support.

As the most current and complete guide to helping you find your way through a maze of security minefields, this book is mandatory reading if you are involved in any aspect of cloud computing.

Coverage Includes:

• Cloud Computing Fundamentals
• Cloud Computing Architecture
• Cloud Computing Software Security Fundamentals
• Cloud Computing Risks Issues
• Cloud Computing Security Challenges
• Cloud Computing Security Architecture
• Cloud Computing Life Cycle Issues
• Useful Next Steps and Approaches

CHAPTER 1:
Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.

—Winston Churchill

Cloud computing evokes different perceptions in different people. To some, it refers to accessing software and storing data in the “cloud” representation of the Internet or a network and using associated services. To others, it is seen as nothing new, but just a modernization of the time-sharing model that was widely employed in the 1960s before the advent of relatively lower-cost computing platforms. These developments eventually evolved to the client/server model and to the personal computer, which placed large amounts of computing power at people's desktops and spelled the demise of time-sharing systems.

In 1961, John McCarthy, a professor at MIT, presented the idea of computing as a utility much like electricity.¹ Another pioneer, who later developed the basis for the ARPANET, the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, and precursor to the Internet, was J.C.R. Licklider. In the 1960s, Licklider promulgated ideas at both ARPA and Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), the high-technology research and development company, that envisioned networked computers at a time when punched card, batch computing was dominant. He stated, “If such a network as I envisage nebulously could be brought into operation, we could have at least four large computers, perhaps six or eight small computers, and a great assortment of disc files and magnetic tape units—not to mention remote consoles and teletype stations—all churning away.”²

The conjunction of the concepts of utility computing and a ubiquitous world-wide network provided the basis for the future evolution of cloud computing.

What Is Cloud Computing?

In an October, 2009 presentation titled “Effectively and Securely Using the Cloud Computing Paradigm,”³ by Peter Mell and Tim Grance of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Information Technology Laboratory, cloud computing is defined as follows:

Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable and reliable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal consumer management effort or service provider interaction.

This cloud model is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models. The five essential characteristics are as follows:

• On-demand self-service
• Ubiquitous network access
• Resource pooling
• Location independence
• Rapid elasticity
• Measured service

The service models are as follows:

• Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS)—Use provider's applications over a network.
• Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS)—Deploy customer-created applications to a cloud.
• Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)—Rent processing, storage, network capacity, and other fundamental computing resources.

The deployment models, which can be either internally or externally implemented, are summarized in the NIST presentation as follows:

• Private cloud—Enterprise owned or leased
• Community cloud—Shared infrastructure for specific community
• Public cloud—Sold to the public, mega-scale infrastructure
• Hybrid cloud—Composition of two or more clouds

These characteristics and models are covered in detail in Chapter 2.

In 2009, the Open Cloud Manifesto was developed by a group of organizations including IBM, Intel, and Google to propose practices for use in the provision of cloud computing services. In the “Open Cloud Manifesto” (www.opencloudmanifesto.org), cloud computing is defined with a set of characteristics and value propositions. The characteristics outlined in the manifesto are as follows:

• The ability to scale and provision computing power dynamically in a cost-efficient way.
• The ability of the consumer (end user, organization, or IT staff) to make the most of that power without having to manage the underlying complexity of the technology.
• The cloud architecture itself can be private (hosted within an organization's firewall) or public (hosted on the Internet).

The value propositions listed in the manifesto are as follows:

• Scalability on demand—All organizations have to deal with changes in their environment. The ability of cloud computing solutions to scale up and down is a major benefit. If an organization has periods of time during which their computing resource needs are much higher or lower than normal, cloud technologies (both private and public) can deal with those changes.
• Streamlining the data center—An organization of any size will have a substantial investment in its data center. That includes buying and maintaining the hardware and software, providing the facilities in which the hardware is housed, and hiring the personnel who keep the data center running. An organization can streamline its data center by taking advantage of cloud technologies internally or by offloading workload into the public.
• Improving business processes—The cloud provides an infrastructure for improving business processes. An organization and its suppliers and partners can share data and applications in the cloud, enabling everyone involved to focus on the business process instead of the infrastructure that hosts it.
• Minimizing startup costs—For companies that are just starting out, organizations in emerging markets, or even advanced technology groups in larger organizations, cloud computing greatly reduces startup costs. The new organization starts with an infrastructure already in place, so the time and other resources that would be spent on building a data center are borne by the cloud provider, whether the cloud is private or public.

From a different perspective, in a ZDNet article titled “The Five Defining Characteristics of Cloud Computing” (http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-287001.html), Dave Malcolm Surgient proposes the following five defining characteristics of cloud computing:

• Dynamic computing infrastructure—A standardized, scalable, dynamic, virtualized, and secure physical infrastructure with levels of redundancy to ensure high levels of availability
• IT service-centric approach—As opposed to a server-centric model, the availability of an easily accessible, dedicated instance of an application or service
• Self-service-based usage model—The capability to upload, build, deploy, schedule, manage, and report on provided business services on demand
• Minimally or self-managed platform—Self-management via software automation employing the following:
  • A provisioning engine for deploying services and tearing them down, recovering resources for high levels of reuse
  • Mechanisms for scheduling and reserving resource capacity
  • Capabilities for configuring, managing, and reporting to ensure that resources can be allocated and reallocated to multiple groups of users
  • Tools for controlling access to resources, and policies for how resources can be used or operations can be performed
• Consumption-based billing—Payment for resources as they are used

---

Important Factors in the Development of Cloud Computing

A number of dynamics such as software interoperability standards, virtualization...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• About the Authors
• Credits
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1: Cloud Computing Fundamentals
• CHAPTER 2: Cloud Computing Architecture
• CHAPTER 3: Cloud Computing Software Security Fundamentals
• CHAPTER 4: Cloud Computing Risk Issues
• CHAPTER 5: Cloud Computing Security Challenges
• CHAPTER 6: Cloud Computing Security Architecture
• CHAPTER 7: Cloud Computing Life Cycle Issues
• CHAPTER 8: Useful Next Steps and Approaches
• Appendix A: Glossary of Terms and Acronyms
• Appendix B: References
• Index
• End User License Agreement