Your network, IoT, cloud computing and the future

My previous series of posts talked about a present problem for anyone deploying on the internet: what do you need to measure when deploying into the cloud and how do you measure cloud performance?

But planning and deployment issues are not restricted to just the immediate-term questions I was tackling there. Anyone in charge of a network has to think about how that network will evolve. The next articles in this series will be about the internet of the future and will suggest ways in which the internet seems likely to develop.

One of the astonishing things about the internet is that it is voluntary. With very little central organization, the internet emerges because it interconnects networks. And because of network effects, interconnecting different networks makes those networks more valuable, particularly when the network merely provides interconnection for intelligent applications at the edges of the network. This nature of the internet is what has allowed it to subsume other communications technologies.

Cloud computing: You are probably ignoring the biggest security flaw

Even if your code is hacker-proof, there's still one way into your systems and it's much tougher to patch.

There's an ongoing debate about the security implications of using cloud computing services versus running IT systems in-house.

Cloud advocates note that the largest cloud companies will have hundreds, or even thousands, of security staff and the time and money to keep their systems up to date. In contrast, the average enterprise may only have a handful of security staff to cover a wide range of different systems, many of which may be ageing and incapable of being entirely secure. However, some businesses feel more secure holding their critical data themselves rather than trusting it to a cloud company that may spread it across datacenters in different countries.

But however good the systems are, the weak link is always the humans, according to ethical hacker and penetration tester Jamie Woodruff

Cloud Security Survey: 2016 Results

In the second annual Cloud Security Survey, CloudPassage surveyed the more than 300,000 members of LinkedIn’s Information Security Community on the state of cloud security. As companies continue to invest in the cloud to reduce IT costs and increase flexibility and scalability, privacy and security of data remain top concerns.

Among the key findings include the following:

Security concerns are the number one barrier to cloud adoption. General security concerns (53%) top the list, followed by legal and regulatory compliance concerns (42%-up from 29% in last year’s survey) and data loss and leakage risks (40%).

Yes, The Cloud Can Be A Security Win

With the right controls in place, the cloud doesn't have to be a scary place. These guidelines can help your company stay safe.

There are so many different kinds of clouds - public, private, hybrid, internal - that many businesses and customers have difficulty deciding which is the right one for them. Furthermore, many businesses may use a few different variations of cloud environments - a private cloud for their own intranet, a hybrid cloud to keep some data on premises and some off premises to meet compliance regulations, and a public cloud for low-risk data.

These different types of environments make it difficult for IT and security teams to monitor every cloud on every device, or to monitor access requests for each different type of cloud environment. If you don’t control the cloud or where your data and apps reside, don’t manage them, or don’t know what you have in the cloud, your risk starts to sprawl and you don’t even know what’s happened when there’s a breach - or where to start to remediate. Follow these guidelines to make sure you avoid the cloud’s possible pitfalls.

The cloud computing effect: Better security for all

IT's paranoia about the cloud forced better security approaches to become the norm and helped on-premises deployments

Cloud computing offers lots of benefits, but improved security is not one that makes many IT lists. In fact, many -- perhaps even most -- IT pros still believe that cloud computing means a huge step backward in terms of security risk.

That doesn't seem to be the case. About 10 percent of our workloads now run on public clouds, and so far, so good.

Why? Ironically, partly because IT has been so paranoid about public clouds that it spent time and money to implement advanced security approaches such as identity and access management and to be more proactive about security measures.

Moreover, public cloud providers themselves understand the importance of security. If they get one cross-tenant hack, they are done for. Thus, providers consistently and proactively update security systems. Most enterprises would like to do the same, but they don't have the time or the budget, which leaves them comparatively more vulnerable.

Read More@ http://www.infoworld.com/article/3104547/cloud-security/the-cloud-computing-effect-better-security-for-all.html

Hybrid cloud security: What it is and best practices

A virtualized hybrid cloud infrastructure comes with the assurance of better business outcomes but the rapid transformation that accompanies cloud also leaves the infrastructure vulnerable to cyber attacks. This makes risk management critical for every enterprise. Since no two enterprises work exactly the same way, a standard risk tolerance profile cannot sustain the potential risks posed by technical hurdles.

How Cloud Technology Will Evolve In 2016

Cloud technology is huge. It's both the present and the future. Like anything with a future, it's continuing to evolve every single year. There are now more cloud contact centers than ever before. If you have anything to do with the cloud, you need to be aware of the changes that are hitting the industry.

In this guide, you are going to learn about some of the main trends that are forcing cloud technology to evolve over the coming year.

The Race is On for Data

This hybrid cloud world has sparked something of an arms race. Studies say that we tend to use more than one cloud at the same time. And that means that companies are going to be doing their best to get your data. Whether it's Amazon or Salesforce, the major cloud players are all competing to get your data.

Data is an asset to companies because they have all the information they need to sell their other services. In many ways, the grabbing of data for companies is like the grabbing of oil for countries. Every cloud service provider is going to aggressively grab your data.

In many ways, the cloud could evolve in a way that brings you closer to these big companies.

Why Canadian businesses are turning to cloud-based data storage

Rogers Communcations SVP Charlie Wade talks about the climbing cost of storing your own data—and why borders still matter

Small to mid-sized businesses across Canada are faced with a problem—they’re collecting more data than ever before, and they need somewhere to store it. While many have their own in-house servers to do the job, these can require frequent maintenance, and, consequently, plenty of cash. To cut down on those costs, companies are increasingly turning to cloud-based data storage. Amazon Web Services was a pioneer in such low-cost data warehousing and remains one of the biggest providers, but for a variety of reasons—whether because companies want additional technical support or because regulations require them to store their data within Canada’s borders—many are looking around for other options. Rogers Communications (which owns Canadian Business) unveiled a new one today— the Rogers Public Cloud. We asked the company’s SVP of products and solutions, Charlie Wade, what Canadian companies are looking for from their cloud-computing providers now:

Cloud Computing Benefits Financial Sector

By embracing cloud computing services, companies in the financial sector are able to add efficiency to their operations.

Cloud computing is one of the rising areas in which IT services are being offered to businesses as a commodity. A cloud computing contract incorporates services for different software and applications, as well as the processing and storage of data. These services help clients enhance the efficiency of their work processes and make it possible for clients to respond to and counter issues swiftly, resulting in increased customer satisfaction.

Finance Opts For Hybrid Cloud

Cloud computing is prevailing in many domains but still hasn’t fully entered the financial sector because of concerns about the security and control of data.

Security is Still Your Responsibility in the Cloud

Over the next 14 months, 80 percent of IT budgets at organizations throughout the U.S. will go to cloud computing services, according to a new global study from Intel Security. As sensitive data is moved to the cloud, it is becoming more obvious that the cloud still has its risks. According to the study, only 13 percent of IT security professionals completely trust public cloud providers to secure sensitive data, and 66 percent of them believe senior management does not completely understand the risks of storing sensitive data in the cloud.

Will Cloud Kill The IT Star?

It’s a question I hear often when speaking with companies across the globe: Does cloud computing spell the demise of the CIO and IT department?

The short answer: No. The longer, more complicated answer: The cloud will force IT leaders and their organizations to fundamentally change what they do (and don’t do), how they work with other departments, and what skills they bring to the table. The upside is tremendous for those who adapt; the downside is perilous for those who don’t.

Is Cloud Computing Right For You?

Cloud computing is a hot topic right now but there’s a real lack of clarity surrounding the solution. Before you sign on the dotted line, there are a whole host of business considerations that you need to make. We’ve collated the most important business considerations to help you identify which option makes more business sense.

Cloud Identity and Access Management market to reach $2.8 billion by 2020

A new report by Allied Market Research projects that the global cloud IAM market would garner revenue of $2.8 billion by 2020, registering a CAGR of 26.2% during the forecast period 2015 – 2020.

Multi factor authentication service is expected to witness fastest growth, at a CAGR of 30.5% from 2015 to 2020. North America was the highest revenue generating region in 2014 for cloud IAM, followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) Market is Expected to Reach $2.8 Billion, Worldwide, By 2020

A new report by Allied Market Research titled, “World Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) Market – Opportunities and Forecasts, 2014 – 2020” projects that the global cloud IAM market would garner revenue of $2.8 billion by 2020, registering a CAGR of 26.2% during the forecast period 2015 – 2020. Multi factor authentication service is expected to witness fastest growth, at a CAGR of 30.5% from 2015 to 2020. North America was the highest revenue generating region in 2014 for cloud IAM, followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Identity and access management is a business security framework that manages digital identities, both inside and outside an enterprise. Varied technological environments, increasing cyber-attacks, strict regulatory compliances, and increasing digital identities across organizations are propelling the need of IAM services for information security. Integration of IAM with cloud is gaining popularity owing to its low cost and enhanced security.

The user provisioning service is the largest revenue-generating service of the cloud IAM market, accounting for nearly 40% of the total market revenue in 2014. This segment is expected to maintain its dominance throughout the analysis period.

Among the key end use verticals, IT & telecom was the largest contributor, which accounted for around 25% share in 2014. Stringent government regulations and security standards along with the increasing use of BYOD are the key factors supplementing the adoption of IAM services in IT & telecom sector.

Private cloud dominated the overall cloud IAM market by deployment type, and constituted for around 50% share in 2014, owing to its enhanced data security compared to public cloud and hybrid cloud. However, hybrid cloud would witness highest CAGR of 30.4% during the forecast period owing to its ability to manage IAM services in house as well as on cloud.

Read More: https://telecomnewsroom.com/2016/01/05/cloud-identity-and-access-management-iam-market-is-expected-to-reach-2-8-billion-worldwide-by-2020/

Microsoft Cloud App Security Unmasks Shadow IT

Last year, Microsoft acquired Adallom, a security software company focused on safeguarding data in multi-cloud environments. Soon, Adallom's tech will feature in Microsoft's forthcoming Cloud App Security product.

"Today, we are announcing Microsoft Cloud App Security, based on the Adallom technology, will become generally available in April 2016," said Microsoft Chief Information Security Officer Bret Arsenault, in a Feb. 25 announcement. "Microsoft Cloud App Security brings the same level of visibility and control that IT departments have in their on-premises network to their SaaS applications, including apps like Box, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Ariba, and of course, Office 365."

Cloud security culture a building block for today's businesses

When Brian Lillie is hiring for his security team, the right skills get candidates in the door; the right cultural fit gets one of them the job.

"If you hire the wrong information security leader, they can put security above all else and work can grind to a halt," said Lillie, CIO at Equinix Inc., a Redwood City, Calif., provider of data center space. "They can become the productivity prevention unit, the PPU."

Security is at the forefront at Equinix, which operates 145 data centers on five continents, Lillie said. But in an "innovate or die" business climate, so is helping business users move the company forward -- and for Equinix and many other organizations today, that means giving them access to the power, capacity and flexibility of cloud computing. Cloud innovation thrives, Lillie said, if security is folded into everything the company does.

"I think where you get into trouble is where you make security an afterthought and you make it second to user experience," Lillie said. "There's always a balance between user experience that you get from a beautifully written cloud application and security."

It's a line more and more organizations today have to walk, as business units clamor for cheap, easy-to-install, easy-to-use cloud applications and IT is forced to act as gatekeeper. According to a new report by nonprofit Cloud Security Alliance and cloud security vendor Skyhigh Networks, a "culture of security," often with support from a chief information security officer, or CISO, is needed to ensure a company has vision and vigilance in equal measure.

Read More: http://searchcio.techtarget.com/news/4500272074/Cloud-security-culture-a-building-block-for-todays-businesses

Secure cloud networking

Security continues to top the list of concerns cited by cloud computing users, so you can be sure that cloud service providers also place a high priority on ensuring that your data is neither compromised nor corrupted. Below are some of the key points you should check that your provider has implemented.

The service provider should embed security into the fabric of the infrastructure, test for vulnerabilities and respond quickly to any that may be discovered. They need to operate a rigorous set of operational security controls, including tight control over authentication and high levels of monitoring, logging and reporting.

Responsibilities for network protection and management are shared between the cloud provider and the customer. As a customer, you may not have physical access to the network, but you can implement the logical equivalent within a cloud environment through tools such as guest-operated system firewalls, virtual network gateway configuration and virtual private networks.

The provider runs a multi-tenant datacentre, meaning the network hardware transports data from multiple customers. Network operations for each customer should be logically isolated to ensure complete separation of traffic from different customers. By the same token, virtual networks should also remain detached from each other. The provider should deploy firewalls, anti-malware software and partitioned LANs, offer protection from DDOS attacks and physically separate back-end servers from public-facing interfaces.

Encryption has long been the best way to protect your data's privacy, and you should implement it where you have the power to do so. Data at rest must also be encrypted. Note that encryption will require key management to ensure that data remains accessible over long periods of time, as it is all too easy to mislay keys.

Read More: http://www.zdnet.com/article/secure-cloud-networking/

Security in the cloud

it’s no surprise that security, like every other area of IT, is now shifting to the cloud. Or in some cases, components of it are becoming cloud-based. Analysts agree that it’s a big market. Gartner has predicted that the cloud-based security services market, which it defines as secure email or web gateways, identity and access management (IAM), remote vulnerability assessment, security information, and event management, will hit $4.13 billion (US) by 2017, and Global Industry Analysts, Inc., puts the market at $5.6 billion by 2020

The reasons are simple: the cloud provides the infrastructure to do much more than many businesses, particularly small and medium-sized organizations, have the capacity to even dream of. And it does so in a cost-effective, scalable way, with state of the art technology that’s automatically kept up to date without user intervention.

Security in the cloud can range from a complete service to an enabler of on-premise services. It’s being used in the latter capacity today, in fact, by many of the major security vendors, who have mostly stopped delivering the increasingly large, daily-signature files that have caused IT so many headaches in favour of hybrid solutions that refer to their cloud-based databases.

The move is driven in part by the speed with which malware is developed and distributed. Vendors have discovered that they can do a better job of detecting and disseminating information about threats by leveraging the power of the cloud. In the cloud, they can house the huge volume of data about threats, and can instantly make it available to their users. When something suspicious is detected on a system, it can be passed to a cloud-based analytic engine that examines it, decides if it’s malicious, and takes appropriate action. Then information about that new threat is immediately available to all other subscribers to the service. With the trend towards targeted attacks, that agility could prevent a major incident.


Read More: http://www.itworldcanada.com/sponsored/security-in-the-cloud

​Firewalling the OpenStack cloud

Securing the cloud is not easy. Now, Mirantis, the pure-play OpenStack business, and Palo Alto Networks, an important network security company, have joined forces to add firewalls via virtual network function (VNF) to Mirantis OpenStack. The partners claim this combination will protect "applications from cyber threats while taking advantage of the agility, cost savings, and innovation of the OpenStack cloud ecosystem."

Oh, and by the way, it will make securing OpenStack clouds much easier.

They're on to something. It's not enough to simply virtualize a legacy security appliance on clouds. Businesses need an integrated security solution that can deal with virturalized environments.

The two companies are doing this by integrating and validating Palo Alto Networks' VMSeries virtualized next-generation firewall with Mirantis OpenStack. The VM security system is deployed on OpenStack as a Glance image. It is integrated with Mirantis's default software defined networking (SDN) , Juniper Networks' Contrail Networking.

Put all together the companies make the following claims for their security solution:

Easy to deploy and provision: Palo Alto Networks' VM-series firewall is quickly deployed on a VM, and run within the OpenStack cloud.

Seamless traffic steering to the VM-Series firewall: Traffic is steered by the SDN controller to VM-series firewall without requiring manual configuration changes to virtual networking attributes.

Next-generation security for virtualized applications and data: The joint solution offers visibility and control at a user, application and content level with complete carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT) capability for service providers.

Advanced threat protection: VM-Series advanced threat protection addresses the complete attack life-cycle, with protection against exploits, viruses, spyware, malware and known and unknown threats, such as advanced persistent threats (APT).

Read More: http://www.zdnet.com/article/firewalling-the-cloud/

3 key cloud trends for 2016

As the new year approaches, it's a good time to look forward to what the key trends will be, so we can take advantage of them thoughtfully and effectively.

Here are three key cloud trends I'm certain you'll see unfold in 2016.

Trend 1: The continued rise of cloudops

Cloudops is anything to do with operating systems in public or private clouds. It focuses on security, management, monitoring, and governance, as well as being proactive with how systems run over a long period of time.

Doing so means using predictive analytics to determine when performance will become an issue, or when you see patterns emerge that show the likelihood of a breach.

Trend 2: The continued explosion of containers

I've beaten the container horse to death in this blog, so I'm not going into the "what's a container" pitch (go here instead for the key container notions). They are growing in popularity because they push a commonsense approach to building new distributed applications in the cloud, as well as "containerizing" existing applications.

The good news is that containers are living up to expectations, including containers from Docker and CoreOS.

The bad news: There are still missing pieces, such as networking and security services, that need to be shored up before this stuff is completely enterprise-ready. Expect container technology providers and their partners to address most of the limitations in 2016.

Read More: http://www.infoworld.com/article/3014639/cloud-computing/3-key-cloud-trends-for-2016.html