Introduction to Cloud Computing (CSC467)

Unit 5: Cloud Security

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Chapter Overview
Topics
• Cloud Security Issues
• Challenges and Risks
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Security
• Security Monitoring
• Security Architecture Design
• Data and Application Security
• Virtual Machine Security
• Legal Issues and Aspects
• Multi-Tenancy Issues

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• Cloud Security Issues
• Challenges and Risks
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Security
• Security Monitoring
• Security Architecture Design

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Introduction
Cloud Security
• Cloud security, also known as cloud computing security, consists of a set of policies,
controls, procedures and technologies that work together to protect cloud-based
systems, data, and infrastructure.
• These security measures are configured to protect cloud data, support regulatory
compliance and protect customers' privacy as well as setting authentication rules for
individual users and devices.
• From authenticating access to filtering traffic, cloud security can be configured to the
exact needs of the business.
• And because these rules can be configured and managed in one place, administration
overheads are reduced and IT teams empowered to focus on other areas of the business.
• The way cloud security is delivered will depend on the individual cloud provider or the cloud
security solutions in place. However, implementation of cloud security processes should be
a joint responsibility between the business owner and solution provider.
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Introduction

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Introduction
Cloud Security
• Why is Cloud Security important?
• For businesses making the transition to the cloud, robust cloud security is imperative.
• Security threats are constantly evolving and becoming more sophisticated.
Cloud Security Benefits:
• Centralized Security: Cloud-based business networks consist of numerous devices and endpoints
that can be difficult to manage when dealing with shadow IT or BYOD. Managing these entities
centrally enhances traffic analysis and web filtering, streamlines the monitoring of network events
and results in fewer software and policy updates. Disaster recovery plans can also be implemented
and actioned easily when they are managed in one place.
• Reduced Costs: It eliminates the need to invest in dedicated hardware. Not only does this reduce
capital expenditure, but it also reduces administrative overheads and delivers proactive security
features that offer protection 24/7 with little or no human intervention.
• Reduced Administration: Pre-configured security configurations and almost constant security
updates. These tasks can have a massive drain on resources.
• Reliability: Users can safely access data and applications within the cloud no matter where they are
or what device they are using.
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Challenges and Risks
Cloud Security Challenges
• Data Breaches
• Due to targeted attack or the result of human error, application vulnerabilities, or poor security
practices.
• It might involve any kind of information that was not intended for public release, including personal
health information, financial information, personally identifiable information, trade secrets, and
intellectual property.

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Challenges and Risks
Cloud Security Challenges
• Data Encryption
• Implementing a cloud computing
strategy means placing critical data in
the hands of a third party, so ensuring
the data remains secure both at rest
(data residing on storage media) as
well as when in transit is of great
importance.
• Data needs to be encrypted at all
times, with clearly defined roles when
it comes to who will be managing the
encryption keys. To ensure
confidentiality of encrypted data that
resides on a cloud provider’s storage
servers is for the client to own and
manage the data encryption keys.

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Challenges and Risks
Cloud Security Challenges
• Access Management
• Since cloud enables access to company’s
data from anywhere, companies need to
make sure that not everyone has access to
that data.
• Various policies are implemented to ensure
only legitimate users only have access to
vital information.

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Challenges and Risks
Cloud Security Challenges
• Denial of Service (DoS/DDoS attacks)
• Distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS), like any denial-of-service attack (DoS), has as its final goal to stop the
functioning of the targeted site so that no one can access it.
• The services of the targeted host connected to the internet are then stopped temporarily, or even indefinitely.

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Challenges and Risks
Cloud Security Challenges
• Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs)
• APTs are a parasitical form of cyber-attack that infiltrates systems to establish a foothold in the IT infrastructure of
target companies, from which they steal data.
• APTs pursue their goals stealthily over extended periods of time, often adapting to the security measures intended to
defend against them.

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Challenges and Risks
Cloud Security Risks
1. Theft or loss of Intellectual Property
• The research done by Skyhigh indicated that
21% of data uploaded by companies to cloud-
based file management services contain
sensitive data.
• The Ponemon Institute and Surveying 409 IT
investigated the risk posed by BYOC (bring our
own cloud) which revealed that most of the
interviewees had no idea of the threat posed
by bringing their own cloud storage devices to
their organization. Employees unwittingly help
cyber- criminals access sensitive data stored
in their cloud accounts.
• Weak cloud security measures within an
organization include storing data without
encryption or failing to install multi-factor
authentication to gain access to the service.

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Challenges and Risks
Cloud Security Risks
2. Compliance Violations
• Organizations can quickly go into a state of
non-compliance, which puts them in the risk
of serious consequences. BYOC is one of the
ways companies often violate one of the
tenets and regulations instituted by the
government or Industrial Corporation.
• A state of non-compliance with any of these
bodies lands companies in a lot of trouble. To
mitigate this risk, companies should always
use authentication systems for all the
sensitive data in the firm. Even tech giants
like Facebook have been victims of resource
exploitation due to user error or
misconfigurations. Keeping employees
informed about the dangers and risks of data
sharing is of at most importance.

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 Challenges and Risks
Cloud Security Risks
3. Malware attacks
• As technology improves, and protection
systems evolve, cyber-criminals have also
come up with new techniques to deliver
malware targets. Attackers encode
sensitive data onto video files and upload
them to YouTube.
• Skyhigh reports that cyber-criminals use
private twitter accounts to deliver the
malware which then exhilarates sensitive
data a few characters at a time. Some have
also been known to use phishing attacks
through file-sharing services to deliver the
malware.

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 Challenges and Risks
Cloud Security Risks
4. End-user control
• When a firm is unaware of the risk posed by
workers using cloud services, the employees
could be sharing just about anything. Insider
threats have become common.
• For instance, if a salesman is about to resign from
one firm to join a competitor firm, they could
upload customer contacts to cloud storage
services and access them later.

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 Challenges and Risks
Cloud Security Risks
5. Contract breaches with clients
and/or business partners
• Contracts restrict how business
partners or clients use data and also
who has the authorization to access
it. Employees put both the firm and
themselves at risk of legal action
when they move restricted data into
their cloud accounts without
permission from the relevant
authorities.
• Violation of business contracts
through breaching confidentiality
agreements is common. This is
especially when the cloud service
maintains the right to share all data
uploaded with third parties.

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Challenges and Risks
Cloud Security Risks
6. Shared vulnerabilities
• From the service provider to the client
and business partners, every stakeholder
shares responsibility in securing data.
Every client should be inclined to take
precautionary measures to protect their
sensitive data.
• While the major providers have already
taken steps to secure their side, the more
delicate control measures are for the
client to take care of. Dropbox, Microsoft,
Box, and Google, among many others,
have adopted standardized procedures to
secure our data. These measures can
only be successful when we have also
taken steps to secure our sensitive data.
• Key security protocols such as protection
of user passwords and access restrictions
are the client’s responsibility.
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Challenges and Risks
Cloud Security Risks
6. Attacks to deny service to legitimate
users
• We are most likely well aware of cyber-attacks
and how they can be used to hijack
information and establish a foothold on the
service provider’s platform.
• Denial of service attacks, unlike cyber-
attacks, do not attempt to bypass our security
protocol. Instead, they make our servers
unavailable to illegitimate users. However, in
some cases, DoS is used as a smokescreen
for a variety of other malicious activities. They
can also be used to take down some security
appliances like web application firewalls.

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Challenges and Risks
Cloud Security Risks
8. Insecure Application Programming
Interfaces (APIs)
• API offer users the opportunity to customize their
cloud service experience. Apart from giving firms
the ability to customize the features on their
cloud service provider, they also provide access,
authenticate, and effect encryption.
• As APIs evolve to provide better service to users,
they also increase their security risk on the data
client’s store. APIs provide programmers with the
tools to integrate their programs with job- critical
applications. Youtube is one of the sites with an
API that allows users to embed Youtube videos
into their apps or websites.
• Despite of this great opportunity that the
technology presents the user, it also increases
the level of vulnerability to their data. Cyber-
criminals have more opportunities to take
advantage of thanks to these vulnerabilities

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Challenges and Risks
Cloud Security Risks
9. Loss of data
• Data stored on cloud servers can be lost
through a natural disaster, malicious
attacks, or a data wipe by the service
provider. Losing sensitive data is
devastating to firms, especially if they have
no recovery plan.
• Google is an example of the big tech firms
that have suffered permanent data loss
after being struck by lightning four times in
its power supply lines. Amazon was
another firm that lost its essential
customer data back in 2011. The
backup protocol could relate to physical
access, storage locations, and natural
disasters.

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Challenges and Risks
Cloud Security Risks
10. Diminished Customer Trust
• It is inevitable for customers to feel unsafe
after data breach concerns at our firm.
There have been massive security
breaches that resulted in the theft of
millions of customer credit and debit card
numbers from data storage facilities.
• The breaches reduce customer trust in
the security of their data. A breach in an
organization’s data will inevitably lead to a
loss of customers, which ultimately
impacts the firm’s revenue.

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Challenges and Risks
Cloud Security Risks
10. Increased Customer
Agitation
• A growing number of cloud service
critics are keen to see which
service providers have weak
security protocols and encourage
customers to avoid them. Most of
these critics are popular around the
internet and could lead to a poor
impression of our firm in a few
posts.
• If our customers suspect that their
data is not safe in our hands, they
not only move to competitor firms
but also damage our firm’s
reputation.

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Challenges and Risks
Cloud Security Risks
10. Revenue Losses
• Customers of a store will avoid
buying from the store in the wake
of news of data breach in the
organization. A well-known
company as Target estimated a
data breach in its platform to cost
around $128 million. The CEO of
the company resigned, and the
company’s directors remain
under oversight by cyber security
companies.

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Challenges and Risks
Managing Cloud Security
The following steps will aid business decision-makers and enterprise IT managers to analyze cloud
security of company data:-
1. Ensure governance and compliance is effective
• Establish privacy and compliance policies to protect their assets.
• Create a framework of governance that establishes authority and a chain of responsibility in the organization.
• A well-defined set of policies clearly describes the responsibilities and roles of each employee. It should also define
how they interact and pass information.
2. Auditing and business procedures
• Every system in an organization requires a regular audit that firms keep their IT systems in check in case of malware
and phishing attacks.
• An IT system audit must also check the compliance of IT system vendors and data in the cloud servers. These are the
three crucial areas that need to be frequently audited by cloud service customers:
a. Security in the cloud service facility,
b. Access to the audit trail, and
c. the internal control environment of the cloud service provider.

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Challenges and Risks
Managing Cloud Security
3. Manage identities, people and roles
• Employees from the cloud service provider will inevitably have access to our firm’s applications and data.
• Ensure that the cloud service provider has sufficient policies to govern who has access to sensitive data and software.
• Provide the customer the privilege to manage and assign authorization for the users.
4. Enforcing privacy policies
• Privacy and protection of personal and sensitive information are crucial to any organization’s success.
• Personal data held by an organization could face bugs or security negligence.
• If a provider is not offering adequate security measures, the firm should consider seeking a different cloud service
provider or not uploading sensitive information on the cloud.
5. Assess security vulnerabilities for cloud applications
• Organizations have different types of data that they store in the cloud. Different considerations should be made
according to the kind of data the firm intends to secure.
• Cloud application security poses diverse challenges to both the provider and the firm. Depending on the deployment
model of the cloud service provider e.g., IaaS, SaaS, or PaaS, there are different considerations for both parties.

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Challenges and Risks
Managing Cloud Security
6. Cloud networks security
• Audits of the cloud networks should be able to establish malicious traffic that can be detected and blocked. However,
the cloud service providers have no way of knowing which network traffic its users plan to send or receive.
• Organizations must then work together with their service providers to establish safety measures.
7. Evaluating physical infrastructure and security controls
• The security of the physical infrastructure of an IT system determines its vulnerability at the onset of a malicious attack.
• The provider must assure its users that appropriate measures are in place. Facilities and infrastructure should be
stored in secure locations and backed up to protect against external threats.
• It is becoming more critical to maintain privacy and security with more data and software being migrated to the cloud.
• The IT groups must consider the cloud security risks and implement solutions to ensure the security of client data
stored and processed in the cloud.

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Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Security
What is SaaS Security?
• SaaS Security refers to securing user privacy and corporate data in subscription-based cloud
applications. SaaS applications carry a large amount of sensitive data and can be accessed from
almost any device by a mass of users, thus posing a risk to privacy and sensitive information.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Security issues
• Cloud computing models of the future will likely combine the use of SaaS (and other as a service
as appropriate), utility computing, and Web 2.0 collaboration technologies to leverage the Internet
to satisfy their customers’ needs.
• New business models being developed as a result of the move to cloud computing are creating not
only new technologies and business operational processes but also new security requirements and
challenges as described previously.
• SaaS will likely remain the dominant cloud service model for the foreseeable future and the area
where the most critical need for security practices and oversight will reside.
• Just as with a managed service provider, corporations or end users will need to research vendors’
policies on data security before using vendor services to avoid losing or not being able to access
their data.
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 Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
The Baseline Security Practices for the SaaS Environment
1. Security Management
• Lack of clearly defined roles and responsibilities, and agreement on expectations, can result in loss and confusion among
the security team about what is expected of them, how their skills and experienced can be leveraged, and meeting their
performance goals. Morale among the team and pride in the team is lowered, and security suffers as a result.
2. Risk Management
• Effective risk management entails
• identification of technology assets;
• identification of data and its links to business processes, applications, and data stores;
• and assignment of ownership and custodial responsibilities.
• Actions should also include maintaining a repository of information assets. Owners have authority and accountability for
information assets including protection requirements, and custodians implement confidentiality, integrity, availability, and
privacy controls.
• A formal risk assessment process should be created that allocates security resources linked to business continuity.
3. Risk/ Vulnerability Assessment
• Security risk assessment is critical to helping the information security organization make informed decisions when
balancing the dueling priorities of business utility and protection of assets. Lack of attention to completing formalized risk
assessments can contribute to an increase in information security audit findings, can jeopardize certification goals, and
can lead to inefficient and ineffective selection of security controls that may not adequately mitigate information security
risks to an acceptable level. A formal information security risk management process should proactively assess information
security risks as well as plan and manage them on a periodic or as-needed basis.
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 Security Monitoring and Incident Response
• Centralized security information management systems should be used to provide notification of security
vulnerabilities and to monitor systems continuously through automated technologies to identify potential issues.
• They should be integrated with network and other systems monitoring processes (e.g., security information
management, security event management, security information and event management, and security operations
centers that use these systems for dedicated 24/7/365 monitoring).
• Management of periodic, independent third-party security testing should also be included.
• Many of the security threats and issues in SaaS center around application and data layers, so the types and
sophistication of threats and attacks for a SaaS organization require a different approach to security monitoring than
traditional infrastructure and perimeter monitoring. The organization may thus need to expand its security monitoring
capabilities to include application- and data- level activities. This may also require subject-matter experts in
applications security and the unique aspects of maintaining privacy in the cloud. Without this capability and expertise, a
company may be unable to detect and prevent security threat and attacks to its customer data and service stability.
• Incident response is an organized approach to addressing and managing the aftermath of a security breach or
attack (also known as an incident).
• The goal is to handle the situation in a way that limits damage and reduces recovery time and costs. An incident
response plan includes a policy that defines, in specific terms, what constitutes an incident and provides a step-by-step
process that should be followed when an incident occurs. An organization's incident response is conducted by the
computer incident response team, a carefully selected group that, in addition to security and general IT staff, may
include representatives from legal, human resources, and public relations departments.

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Security Architecture Design
• Security Architecture is one component of a products/systems overall architecture and is developed
to provide guidance during the design of the product/system.
• A security architecture framework should be established with consideration of processes
(enterprise authentication and authorization, access control, confidentiality, integrity, non-
repudiation, 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.
• 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.

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Security Architecture Design
Security Boundaries
• A particular service model defines the
boundary between the responsibilities of
service provider and customer.
• Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) stack
model defines the boundaries between
each service model and shows how
different functional units relate to each
other.

CSA Stack Model

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Security Architecture Design
Key Points to CSA Model
• IaaS is the most basic level of service with PaaS and SaaS next two above levels of services.
• Moving upwards, each of the service inherits capabilities and security concerns of the model
beneath.
• IaaS provides the infrastructure, PaaS provides platform development environment, and SaaS
provides operating environment.
• IaaS has the least level of integrated functionalities and integrated security while SaaS has the
most.
• This model describes the security boundaries at which cloud service provider's responsibilities end
and the customer's responsibilities begin.
• Any security mechanism below the security boundary must be built into the system and should be
maintained by the customer.

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• Data and Application Security
• Virtual Machine Security

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Data And Application Security
Data Privacy and Security
• Cloud computing has transformed the way organizations approach IT, enabling them to become more agile, introduce
new business models, provide more services, and reduce IT costs.
• Cloud computing technologies can be implemented in a wide variety of architectures, under different service and
deployment models, and can coexist with other technologies and software design approaches.
• Maintaining control over the data is paramount to cloud success.
• A decade ago, enterprise data typically resided in the organization’s physical infrastructure, on its own servers in the enterprise’s data center, where one
could segregate sensitive data in individual physical servers. Today, with virtualization and the cloud, data may be under the organization’s logical
control, but physically reside in infrastructure owned and managed by another entity.
• This shift in control is the number one reason new approaches and techniques are required to ensure organizations
can maintain data security.
• When an outside party owns, controls, and manages infrastructure and computational resources, how can we be assured that business or regulatory
data remains private and secure, and that our organization is protected from damaging data breaches—and feel we can still completely satisfy the full
range of reporting, compliance, and regulatory requirements?

• Some of the points to keep data private and secure in cloud infrastructure are as below:
1. Avoid storing sensitive information in the cloud.
2. Read the user agreement to find out how the cloud service storage works.
3. Password sensitivity
4. Encrypt the data
5. Use Encrypted cloud services
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Data And Application Security
Vulnerability Assessment
• Vulnerability assessment classifies network assets to more efficiently prioritize vulnerability-
mitigation programs, such as patching and system upgrading.
• Vulnerability management should be integrated with discovery, patch management, and upgrade
management processes to close vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.
• A vulnerability assessment attempts to identify the exposed vulnerabilities of a specific host, or
possibly an entire network. The vulnerabilities may be due to configuration problems or missing
software patches.
• Vulnerability Assessment in cloud should be done in periodic basis with predefined service level
agreement.

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Data And Application Security

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Data And Application Security
Application Security
• Application security is one of the critical success factors for 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 team.
• Although product engineers 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.
• Some of the things that we should consider while moving to cloud application are:
a. Risks associated with cloud application
b. The fact that someone is managing and controlling our critical application
c. The perimeter of cloud is different and multitenant
d. Application should be protected with industry standard firewall and security products e. Insecure Interfaces and
Application Program Interface (API’s)
e. Denial of Service (DOS) attack
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Data And Application Security

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Data And Application Security
Application Security
1. Identity Access Management: IAM ensures every user is authenticated and can only access
authorized data and application functionality. A holistic approach to IAM can protect cloud
applications and improve the overall security posture of an organization.
2. Encryption: Implementing encryption in the right areas optimizes application performance while
protecting sensitive data. In general, the three types of data encryption to consider are encryption
in transit, encryption at rest, and encryption in use.
a. Encryption in transit protects data as it’s transmitted between cloud systems or to end-users. This includes
encrypting communication between two services, whether they’re internal or external, so that data cannot be
intercepted by unauthorized third parties.
b. Encryption at rest ensures data cannot be read by unauthorized users while it is stored in the cloud. This can include
multiple layers of encryption at the hardware, file, and database levels to fully protect sensitive application data from
data breaches.
c. Encryption in use is aimed at protecting data that is currently being processed, which is often the most vulnerable
data state. Keeping data in use safe involves limiting access beforehand using IAM, role-based access control,
digital rights protection, and more.

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Data And Application Security
Application Security
3. Threat monitoring: After applications are deployed to the cloud, it’s crucial to continuously
monitor for cyber threats in real-time. Since the application security threat landscape is constantly
evolving, leveraging threat intelligence data is crucial for staying ahead of malicious actors. This
enables development teams to find and remediate cloud application security threats before they
impact end-users.
4. Data privacy & compliance: Along with application security, data privacy, and compliance are
crucial for protecting end-users of cloud native applications. It includes careful vetting of open
source components, data encryption, access controls, and other cloud security controls can also
help protect the privacy of application users.
5. Automated security testing: A key part of DevSecOps is integrating automated security testing
directly into the development process. By automatically scanning for vulnerabilities throughout
the continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) process, development teams can
ensure every new software build is secure before deploying to the cloud. This includes not only
the code and open source libraries that applications rely on, but the container images and
infrastructure configurations they’re using for cloud deployments.
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 Virtual Machine Security
• Virtual machines are the containers in which
applications and guest operating systems run.
• By design, all VMware virtual machines are
isolated from one another. This isolation
enables multiple virtual machines to run
securely while sharing hardware and ensures
both their ability to access hardware and their
uninterrupted performance.
• Although virtual machines share physical
resources such as CPU, memory, and I/O
devices, a guest operating system on an
individual virtual machine cannot detect any
device other than the virtual devices made
available to it.

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 Virtual Machine Security
Virtual Machine Isolation
• In the cloud environment, physical servers are consolidated to multiple virtual machine instances on virtualized
servers.
• 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.
• 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.
• Integrity monitoring and log inspection software must be applied at the virtual machine level.
• A further area of concern with the potential for undetected network attacks between VMs collocated on a
physical server, we can monitor the traffic from each VM.
• Network virtualization must deliver an appropriate network interface to the VM. That interface might be a
multiplexed channel with all the switching and routing handled in the network interconnect hardware.
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• Legal Issues and Aspects
• Multi-Tenancy Issues

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Disaster Recovery
• A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is a business plan that describes how work can be resumed
quickly and effectively after a disaster. Disaster recovery planning is just part of business
continuity planning and applied to aspects of an organization that rely on an IT infrastructure to
function.
• The overall idea is to develop a plan that will allow the IT department to recover enough data
and system functionality to allow a business or organization to operate - even possibly at a
minimal level.
• A disaster recovery plan (DRP) documents policies, procedures and actions to limit the
disruption to an organization in the wake of a disaster. Just as a disaster is an event that makes
the continuation of normal functions impossible, a disaster recovery plan consists of actions
intended to minimize the negative effects of a disaster and allow the organization to maintain or
quickly resume mission-critical functions.

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Disaster Recovery
Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
• RTO
• The recovery time objective (RTO) is the maximum amount of time allocated for restoring application functionality.
This is based on business requirements and is related to the importance of the application. Critical business
applications require a low RTO.
• RPO
• The recovery point objective (RPO) is the acceptable time window of lost data due to the recovery process. For
example, if the RPO is one hour, we must completely back up or replicate the data at least every hour. Once we
bring up the application in an alternate datacenter, the backup data may be missing up to an hour of data. Like RTO,
critical applications target a much smaller RPO.

What is the tolerable

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Disaster Recovery
Why is Disaster Recovery needed?
a. Machines, hardware and even data centers fail.
b. Much like machines, humans are not perfect. They make mistakes. In case of mistakes, DR
may help resume business from back date.
c. Customers expect perfection as they don’t want disruption in services
d. DR enabled organizations will attract more customers.

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Disaster Recovery
Disaster Recovery Management/ Planning Steps
1. Count the costs.
• Although data center downtime is harmful to any company that relies on its IT services, it costs some companies
more than others. Our disaster recovery plan should enable a fast return to service, but it shouldn’t cost we more
than we are losing in downtime costs.
2. Evaluate the types of threats we face and how extensively they can affect our facility.
• Malicious attacks can occur anywhere, but we may also face threats peculiar to our location, such as weather
events (tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and so on), earthquakes or other dangers. Part of preparing for a disaster
is to know what is likely to occur and how those threats could affect our systems. Evaluating these situations
beforehand allows we to better take appropriate action should one of these events occur.
3. Know what we have and how critical it is to operations.
• Responding to a disaster in our data center is similar to doing so in medicine: we need to treat the more serious
problems first, then the more minor ones. By determining which systems are most critical to our data center, we
enable our IT staff to prioritize and make the best use of the precious minutes and hours immediately following an
outage. Not every system need be functional immediately following a disaster.
4. Identify critical personnel and gather their contact information.
1. Who do we most want to be present in the data center following an outage? Who has the most expertise in a
given area and the greatest ability to oversee some part of the recovery effort? Being able to get in touch with
these people is crucial to a fast recovery. Collect their contact information and, just as importantly, keep it up to
date. If it’s been a year or more since we last checked, some of that contact information is likely out of date.
Every minute we spend trying to find important personnel is time not spent on recovery. 47
Disaster Recovery
Disaster Recovery Management/ Planning Steps
6. Train the employees.
• Knowledge of how to implement disaster recovery procedures is obviously important when an outage occurs. To
this end, prepare by training personnel and not just in their respective areas of expertise. Everyone should have
some broad- based knowledge of the recovery process so that it can be at least started even if not everyone is
present.
7. Ensure that everyone knows the disaster recovery plan and understands his or her role.
• Announcing the plan and assigning roles is not something we should do after a disaster strikes; it should be done
well in advance, leaving time for personnel to learn their roles and to practice them. Almost nothing about a disaster
event should be new (aside from some contingencies of the moment, perhaps): the IT staff should implement
disaster recovery as a periodic task (almost) like any other.
8. Practice.
• Needless to say, this is perhaps the most critical part of preparation for a downtime event. The difference between
knowing our role and being able to execute it well is simply practice. We may not be able to shut down our data
center to simulate precisely all of the conditions we will face in an outage, but we can go through many of the
procedures nevertheless. Some recommendations prescribe semiannual drills, at a minimum, to practice
implementing the disaster recovery plan. If there’s one thing we take from this article, it’s that we should practice
our disaster recovery plan—don’t expect it to unfold smoothly when we need it (regardless of how well laid-out a
plan it is) if we haven’t given it a trial run or two.

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Disaster Recovery
Disaster Recovery Management/ Planning Steps
9. Automate where possible.
• Our staff is limited, so it can only do so much. The more that our systems can do on their own in a recovery
situation, the faster the recovery will generally be. This also leaves less room for human error—particularly in the
kind of stressful atmosphere that exists following a disaster.
10. Follow up after a disaster.
• When a downtime event does occur, evaluate the performance of the personnel and the plan to determine if any
improvements can be made. Update our plan accordingly to enable a better response in the future. Furthermore,
investigate the cause of the outage. If it’s an internal problem, take necessary measures to correct equipment
issues to avoid the same problem occurring again.

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Identity and Access Management (IAM)
• Identity and access management (IAM or
IdAM for short) is a way to tell who a user is
and what they are allowed to do.
• IAM is also called identity management (IdM).
• IAM is a means of managing a given set of
users' digital identities, and the privileges
associated with each identity. It is an umbrella
term that covers a number of different products
that all do this same basic function.
• Within an organization, IAM may be a single
product, or it may be a combination of
processes, software products, cloud services,
and hardware that give administrators visibility
and control over the organizational data that
individual users can access.

50
Identity and Access Management (IAM)
What is identity in the context of Computing?
• A person's entire identity cannot be uploaded and stored in a computer, so "identity" in a
computing context means a certain set of properties that can be conveniently measured and
recorded digitally. Think of an ID card or a passport: not every fact about a person is recorded in
an ID card, but it contains enough personal characteristics that a person's identity can quickly be
matched to the ID card.
• To verify identity, a computer system will assess a user for characteristics that are specific to
them. If they match, the user's identity is confirmed. These characteristics are also known as
"authentication factors," because they help authenticate that a user is who they say they are.
• The three most widely used authentication factors are:
1. Something the user knows
2. Something the user has
3. Something the user is

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Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Something the user knows:
• This factor is a piece of knowledge that only one user should have, like a username and
password combination.
• Imagine that John wants to check his work email from home. To do so, he will first have to log in
to his email account by establishing his identity, because if somebody who wasn't John accessed
John's email, then company data would be compromised.
• John logs in by entering his email, [email protected], and the password that only he knows –
for example, “5jt*2)f12?y”. Presumably, no one else besides John knows this password, so the
email system recognizes John and lets him access his email account. If someone else tried to
impersonate John by entering their email address as “[email protected],” they wouldn't be
successful without knowing to type “5jt*2)f12?y” as the password.

52
Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Something the user has
• This factor refers to possession of a physical token that is issued to authorized users. The most
basic example of this authentication factor is the use of a physical house key to enter one's
home. The assumption is that only someone who owns, rents, or otherwise is allowed into the
house will have a key.
• In a computing context, the physical object could be a key fob, a USB device, or even a
smartphone. Suppose that John's organization wanted to be extra sure that all users really were
who they said they were by checking two authentication factors instead of one.
• Now, instead of just entering his secret password – the something the user knows factor – John
has to show the email system that he possesses an object that no one else has. John is the only
person in the world who possesses his personal smartphone, so the email system texts him a
one-time code, and John types in the code to demonstrate his possession of the phone.

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Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Something the user is
• This refers to a physical property of one's body. A common example of this authentication factor in
action is Face ID, the feature offered by many modern smartphones. Fingerprint scanning is
another example. Less common methods used by some high-security organizations include
retina scans and blood tests.
• Imagine John's organization decides to tighten security even more by making users verify three
factors instead of two (this is rare). Now John has to enter his password, verify possession of his
smartphone, and scan his fingerprint before the email system confirms that he really is John.

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Identity and Access Management (IAM)
What is access management?
• "Access" refers to what data a user can see and what actions they can perform once they log in.
Once John logs into his email, he can see all the emails he has sent and received. However, he
should not be able to see the emails sent and received by Tracy, his coworker.
• In other words, just because a user's identity is verified, that doesn't mean they should be able to
access whatever they want within a system or a network. For instance, a low-level employee
within a company should be able to access their corporate email account, but they should not be
able to access payroll records or confidential HR information.
• Access management is the process of controlling and tracking access. Each user within a system
will have different privileges within that system based on their individual needs. An accountant
does indeed need to access and edit payroll records, so once they verify their identity, they
should be able to view and update those records as well as access their email account.

55
Legal Issues and Aspects
• Data Protection
• Data protection is one of the most critical legal issues we must consider when using the cloud for our
operations. It is especially important if our business includes handling the personal data of individuals in
any form. There are data protection regulations with strict provisions on how we handle the personal
data of individuals.
• We need to understand what the law says about data protection in our jurisdictions.
• Data Privacy and Security
• Another essential legal issue in cloud computing that we should pay attention to is data privacy and
security. If a third party receives unauthorized access to private information about our clients, it can
damage our company’s reputation. Our business risks losing sensitive and corporate confidential
information in the case of a security breach. We may also have to compensate our customer for
violating their data privacy, which would cost our business a lot.
• Make sure we engage a CSP that would offer us with the highest privacy and security standard
possible. We should also ensure that there are necessary firewalls to prevent a security breach.

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Legal Issues and Aspects
• Data Ownership (Intellectual Property Rights)
• It is safe to assume that we own all the rights to data sent to the cloud by our company. However, it is
advisable that our Service Level Agreement (SLA) with the CSP expressly indicates that our company
has full rights to the data stored in the cloud and can retrieve it whenever we want. It is also essential to
have these provisions in place, especially concerning data generated inside the cloud. The CSP may
want to claim newly generated data because it was generated in the cloud through a data analytics
solution.
• Let the SLA provide that data generated in and out of the cloud by our company belongs to our
company.
• Jurisdiction Issues
• The issue of differences in laws applicable across different jurisdictions is one of the legal issues in
cloud computing. For instance, the government can require CSPs to disclose client data in some
jurisdictions. However, in some other jurisdictions, there is express protection for data stored in the
cloud, and in those jurisdictions, governments cannot access it without following due process.

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Multi-Tenancy Issues
Multitenancy in Cloud computing
• Multitenancy is a type of software
architecture where a single software
instance can serve multiple distinct user
groups. It means that multiple customers of
cloud vendors are using the same
computing resources. As they are sharing
the same computing resources but the data
of each Cloud customer is kept separate
and secure. It is a very important concept
of Cloud Computing.
• Multitenancy is also a shared host where
the same resources are divided among
different customers in cloud computing.

58
Multi-Tenancy Issues
Advantages of Multitenancy :
• The use of Available resources is maximized by sharing resources.
• Customer's Cost of Physical Hardware System is reduced, and it reduces the usage of
physical devices and thus power consumption and cooling cost savings.
• Save Vendor's cost as it becomes difficult for a cloud vendor to provide separate Physical
Services to each individual.

Disadvantages of Multitenancy :
• Data is stored in third-party services, which reduces our data security and puts it into
vulnerable conditions.
• Unauthorized access will cause damage to data.

59
Questions

60
Questions
1. What are the cloud security challenged? How risks can be handles n cloud computing? Model
2. Discuss about disasters in cloud. How intrusions are detected in cloud? Model
3. Discuss the security architecture, trust architecture and governance framework for ensuring cloud security controls.
2076
4. Explain the different types of implementing Network Intrusion Detection Systems in cloud. 2071(II)
5. Discuss different approaches used for ensuring host security in cloud networks. 2076
6. Explain the cloud security challenges. 2072
7. What is host security? Discuss various approaches for ensuring host security in cloud networks. 2074
8. What can be the impact of disasters in cloud? How geographic redundancy and organizational redundancy ensures
disaster recovery in cloud services. 2071(II)
9. How can we design the security architecture in cloud? Explain. 2069
10. What do we mean by an intrusion in a cloud network? How intrusion in cloud networks are detected? 2073
11. Why intrusion detection systems are implemented in cloud networks? How anamoly based intrusion detection
system differs from signature based? 2075
12. Explain the process of implementation of Network Intrusion Detection. 2069
13. What do we mean by Network Intrusion detection? 2072
14. How data segmentation and credential management ensures host security in a cloud? Explain with suitable
example. 2073
15. Why it is important to assess the concept of recovery time objective in disaster recovery? How disaster recovery is
done in cloud infrastructure? 2074
61
Questions
16. Discuss how security architecture and trust architecture ensure security of cloud services networks. 2071(II)
17. What do we mean by disaster recovery? How recovery point objective differs from recovery time objective? 2071(I)
18. Explain the disaster recovery planning of cloud computing. 2069
19. Define recovery point objective. How the geographical redundancy and organizational redundancy are used in cloud
disaster recovery? 2075
20. Explain the disaster recovery planning in cloud system. 2072

62
The End

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