Security Architecture In Cloud || Data Security || Application Security || Virtual Machine Security

In cloud security architecture, responsibility is shared between the cloud provider and customer. As more organizations shift and share their data in the cloud, the more important it becomes to have a security architecture in place to secure data.

The cloud can be delivered in multiple formats. As such, cloud security architectures are designed to work in a combination of software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) environments -- in addition to areas such as the public or private cloud.

The goal of a cloud security architecture is met through a series of functional elements. These elements are often considered separately rather than as part of a coordinated architectural plan. This includes access security or access control, network security, application security and contractual security as well as monitoring, sometimes called service security. Finally, there's data protection, which is the measures that are applied at the protected-asset level.

A complete cloud security architecture addresses the goals by uniting the functional elements.

• A security architecture framework should be established with consideration of processes (enterprise authentication and authorization, access control, confidentiality, integrity, nonrepudiation, security management, etc.), operational procedures, technology specifications, people and organizational management, and security program compliance and reporting. 

• A security architecture document should be developed that defines security and privacy principles to meet business objectives. 

• Documentation is required for management controls and metrics specific to asset classification and control, physical security, system access controls, network and computer management, application development and maintenance, business continuity, and compliance. 

• A design and implementation program should also be integrated with the formal system development life cycle to include a business case, requirements definition, design, and implementation plans. 

• Technology and design methods should be included, as well as the security processes necessary to provide the following services across all technology layers: 

1. Authentication 
2. Authorization 
3. Availability 
4. Confidentiality 
5. Integrity 
6. Accountability 
7. Privacy 

• The creation of a secure architecture provides the engineers, data center operations personnel, and network operations personnel a common blueprint to design, build, and test the security of the applications and systems. 

• Design reviews of new changes can be better assessed against this architecture to assure that they conform to the principles described in the architecture, allowing for more consistent and effective design reviews.

6.3.22 Data Security 

• The ultimate challenge in cloud computing is data-level security, and sensitive data is the domain of the enterprise, not the cloud computing provider. 
• Security will need to move to the data level so that enterprises can be sure their data is protected wherever it goes. 
• For example, with data-level security, the enterprise can specify that this data is not allowed to go outside of the United States. It can also force encryption of certain types of data, and permit only specified users to access the data. It can provide compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). True unified end-to-end security in the cloud will likely requires an ecosystem of partners.

6.3.23 Application Security 

• Application security is one of the critical success factors for a world-class SaaS company. This is where the security features and requirements are defined and application security test results are reviewed. Application security processes, secure coding guidelines, training, and testing scripts and tools are typically a collaborative effort between the security and the development teams. Although product engineering will likely focus on the application layer, the security design of the application itself, and the infrastructure layers interacting with the application, the security team should provide the security requirements for the product development engineers to implement. This should be a collaborative effort between the security and product development team. External penetration testers are used for application source code reviews, and attack and penetration tests provide an objective review of the security of the application as well as assurance to customers that attack and penetration tests are performed regularly. Fragmented and undefined collaboration on application security can result in lower-quality design, coding efforts, and testing results. 

Since many connections between companies and their SaaS providers are through the web, providers should secure their web applications by following Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP)15 guidelines for secure application development (mirroring Requirement 6.5 of the PCI DSS, which mandates compliance with OWASP coding practices) and locking down ports and unnecessary commands on Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP) stacks in the cloud, just as you would on-premises. LAMP is an open-source web development platform, also called a web stack, that uses Linux as the operating system, Apache as the web server, MySQL as the relational database management system RDBMS, and PHP as the object-oriented scripting language. Perl or Python is often substituted for PHP.1

6.3.24 Virtual Machine Security 

In the cloud environment, physical servers are consolidated to multiple virtual machine instances on virtualized servers. Not only can data center security teams replicate typical security controls for the data center at large to secure the virtual machines, they can also advise their customers on how to prepare these machines for migration to a cloud environment when appropriate. 

Firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention, integrity monitoring, and log inspection can all be deployed as software on virtual machines to increase protection and maintain compliance integrity of servers and applications as virtual resources move from on-premises to public cloud environments. By deploying this traditional line of defense to the virtual machine itself, you can enable critical applications and data to be moved to the cloud securely. To facilitate the centralized management of a server firewall policy, the security software loaded onto a virtual machine should include a bidirectional stateful firewall that enables virtual machine isolation and location awareness, thereby enabling a tightened policy and the flexibility to move the virtual machine from on-premises to cloud resources. Integrity monitoring and log inspection software must be applied at the virtual machine level. 

This approach to virtual machine security, which connects the machine back to the mother ship, has some advantages in that the security software can be put into a single software agent that provides for consistent control and management throughout the cloud while integrating seamlessly back into existing security infrastructure investments, providing economies of scale, deployment, and cost savings for both the service provider and the enterprise. 

In the cloud environment, where services are offered on demand and they can continuously evolve, aspects of current models such as trust assumptions, privacy implications, and operational aspects of authentication and authorization, will be challenged. Meeting these challenges will require a balancing act for SaaS providers as they evaluate new models and management processes for IAM to provide end-to-end trust and identity throughout the cloud and the enterprise. Another issue will be finding the right balance between usability and security. If a good balance is not achieved, both business and IT groups may be affected by barriers to completing their support and maintenance activities efficiently