How can infrastructure as a service provide cloud security? | Blog

Mar 21, 2014 Aathira Nair

Speaking of security concerns with Infrastructure as a Service provider, there are many who believe cloud service providers will provide better security, and there are others who believe there will be greater risks associated with cloud usage, such as data breaches and cloud services abuse.

There are many myths associated with cloud security, of which the most common ones encountered by us are listed below:

Virtual clouds are as safe as internal datacenters

  • The primary challenge in this set up is that there is still shared hardware and shared switching with VLANs for separation. This set up is maintained by the infrastructure as a Service provider, and configuration errors do happen. Hence, it is essential to have a built in high level of security at the application level also.

A single Infrastructure as a Service provider solves all problems

  • Managing a single provider is simpler, but outages can happen which can affect your business. One of the well known examples is the power outage faced by Rackspace datacenters caused due to a truck colliding with a power transformer.

Security measures for the cloud is the same as for a physical data center

  • The security threats are of a completely different nature when we are dealing with the cloud. Virtualization, hybrid clouds and shared storage has taken security concerns up a notch.

Security is the responsibility of the Infrastructure as a Service provider

  • SaaS and PaaS providers take up data security responsibilities, but with Infrastructure as a Service provider, a large chunk of the security requisites rests with the enterprise itself. And as seen with many instances, although the provider does ensure security, any data breach is the responsibility of the enterprise

SAS 70 type II audit ensures data security

  • A SAS 70 Type II audit provides a great checklist to validate a provider’s controls were working during the period examined, but it does not equate to security. Audits only assess the past and future assurance of the same standards is not mandatory. Also SAS 70 reviews does not set standards as of now, and are meant to only test the controls of a specific process.

Security processes include security audits and re-assessing network security methods to ensure data integrity. Networks might be highly available, but checking for redundancy and avoiding latent failure points is essential to prevent down time. Nalashaa works to help you ensure your system is secure, reliable, and up at all times. We build contingency plans which go into immediate action in case of any untoward occurrences. We offer a managed infrastructure service to support, trouble shoot and manage your on-premise or cloud infrastructure.

Aathira Nair

An engineer by education, foraying into a medley of activities - content, social media and marketing.