Encryption of Data in the Cloud

Many organisations are nowadays looking on how to take advantage of cloud computing, but security of their data remains a serious concern. However, there are several mechanisms which can help you in encrypting your data in cloud and ensure there is effective data protection.

As organisations grow in size, they experience security challenges which they lack knowledge and experience to handle. Although most IT experts conclude that encryption of cloud data is the key to security, the approach can be daunting, and especially for small to mid-sized businesses. The process of managing encryption keys in a cloud environment is not easy. The encryption key should be kept separate from the encrypted data, and this is a challenge, especially in a cloud environment with an asymmetrical growth.

Encryption keys should be stored in a separate storage block or server. To stay protected against disasters, the encryption keys should be backed up in offline storage. The backup needs to be audited on a regularly basis, probably each month to ensure that it is free from corruption. Although some of the keys will expire automatically, others need to be refreshed, thus, calling for the need for a refresh schedule. For improved security, the key themselves should be encrypted, while the master and recovery keys should be given a multi-factor authentication.

It is good for any organisation to let a third party manage the encryption keys rather than the IT department of the organisation. If you encrypt the data before uploading it to your cloud storage provider, and then it happens that the same data is needed on a remote or mobile device having no decryption keys, the downloaded data will be useless. In case the company is in need of sharing the data with their business partner, and they don’t need the partner to access the decryption keys directly, this will become complex.

The following are some of the criteria which can be used for encrypting data in the cloud:

Exercise discretion

You have to determine the percentage of your organisation data which is considered as being sensitive. You will find that majority of your organisation data does not need to be encrypted. With a ubiquitous encryption, the functionality of the application can be interrupted, most probably the search and report functionality, and these are very important in the today’s cloud model. A discretionary approach to encryption should ensure that the sensitive data has been secured without interference with the advantages associated with emerging technologies.

Adherence to security policy of the corporate
The security policy for your organisation can help you determine the sensitive information in the environment and then make use of the strategy to create a strategy for the encryption strategy. Both the internal and external regulations in relation to the business have to be considered.

Automation-ready encryption
Once you have agreed on what needs to be encrypted, an action should be taken. Security technologies should be leveraged for identification of sensitive information in the corporate, and the encryption should be used as a remediation tool for risky situations. Once this process has been automated, inappropriate exposure of data will have been mitigated in a content-aware manner.

Consider the human element
Any data security mechanisms must consider the needs of the end users. If the security program of the corporate interferes with the normal workflow of the users, they will have to seek for alternatives to bypass the corporate network entirely.

Cloud providers and their potential SaaS partners should be asked about the protocol they use when transmitting their data. The SSL (Secure Socket Layer) protocol is now not the best since the discovery of a man-in-the-middle attack discovered in 2014. This can only be solved by implementation of TLS rather than the SSL, but the problem comes in that systems running older operating systems such as Windows XP are not able to implement the TLS. This has made some businesses to continue using SSL despite the risk it poses of exposing confidential data. The main solution to this problem is disabling the SSL completely, either on the server or client side, but this will make it inaccessible by systems which rely only on SSL.

Scaling and Economics of Scale for the Cloud

The advantages of moving your computing needs into the cloud is for some an obvious move and for others an important question to consider. The simple explanation is that the market is designed to be more efficient, in this case by moving separate databases to a central location. With new technologies there is a market for unused storage that the economy of scale allows us to free up and eliminate waste by a centralized server. Now pricing isn’t the only motivating factor one might use the Cloud; wether you are outsourcing a whole IT department to the Cloud, a few simple tasks, the hardware systems of your operation, or some combination taking into account waste becomes a vital part of any entrepreneur’s job.

For most new entrepreneurs they are growing their operations and want to keep costs as lean as possible, and as scalable as possible, to keep the business growing according to needs that may not be predictable. So you may be shopping for a Paas operation to meet your particular needs, now one thing to consider is what do you want to keep in house and what services do you want to pay for. Your Paas provider is going to be able to provide a number of services that when you started would have been generally wasted resources. And in the future you have the capacity to move into a different system depending on one’s needs. This flexibility is the essence of the scalability of the information economy in general, it gives a whole new model to the information that wasn’t available in the past.

Economies are run by many factors, one such factor can be scaling, which is what having a dedicated server allows for. By hosting one large server and being able to adjust how the data is stored between computers allows for the Cloud provider to eliminate waste that might be collecting by each company hosting their own dedicated server. The advantages to this model is that it saves start up money for the client, and gives them greater flexibility for their needs, and provides a third party to profit in a new way. This process is one factor in driving our economy, in fact Adam Smith isolated this phenomenon. Adam Smith gave an example of separating tasks between three different individuals, and by doing this he found they were able to produce more; this is an example of an economy of scale. In a more industrial world we see this process going on in factories and all over our economy. The scale of the Cloud provider’s servers allows for them to make more profit than is lost by each client individually.

There are by some standards two ways to scale your operation using Cloud resources, that is horizontal scaling and vertical scaling. Vertical scaling is the ability to add more hardware resources and horizontal scaling is the codes ability to utilize those increased resources. On the one hand you may have more need for a more robust network of memory, and then on the other you may have to scale your operation to be able to handle an increase in RAM usage. The usage of greater quantities of RAM demand a more agile program that can convert between sources of data. An operation that is scalable in these two ways are able to effectively utilize the Cloud to its potential. Different Cloud providers are able to utilize these scaling effects differently. Fore-instance a Paas Cloud service will handle both horizontal scaling and vertical scaling; while a Iaas Cloud provider may only help you to scale your operation vertically.

DLP (Data Loss Prevention) in the Cloud

Most organizations have moved their sensitive data to the cloud, but they lack policy controls for the cloud data. Research has shown that 21% of the documents uploaded to the cloud have sensitive data such as protected health information (PHI), personally identifiable information (PII), intellectual property or payment card data and this creates concerns in terms of cloud compliance. In the year 2014, breaches in cloud data rose.
Most organizations have made an investment in tools for data loss prevention so as to protect loss or theft of their on-promise information and adhere to data compliance laws. The problem is that most of these tools have been made to protect data contained in emails and file servers, meaning that they address issues to do with mobile security and cloud governance since the data will always be passed to unsanctioned cloud services which are regularly accessed by unsecured devices. It has been found each average organizations will upload 3.1GB of data each day, and it is expected that 1/3 of organization data will be in the cloud by 2016. You have to recognize that migration of unprotected data to the cloud is risky, thus, there is a need for any organization to extend data prevention policies to take care of the data in the cloud to protect against being exposed.
Whenever you are addressing DLP, consider the following requirements:
1. Know the activity-level usage in your apps, and then use DLP to identify the activities dealing with sensitive data, anomalies and non-compliant behavior.
2. The cloud DLP software to be used should know the context which surrounds all the activity whenever you are dealing with sensitive data.
3. Restrictions and controls should be formulated in the organization to ensure that sensitive data is used safely.
4. Cloud activities should be tracked at app, user and activity level for compliance and auditing purposes.
5. Sensitive content which is residing in the cloud or moving to the cloud apps has been encrypted.

 

A number of tools for preventing data loss in the cloud have been developed. With NetScope Active Cloud, sensitive data for an organization can be protected from breaches and leaks. The tool provides advanced mechanisms for data loss prevention such as custom regular expressions, over 3000 data identifiers, support for over 500 file types, double-byte characters for international support, proximity analysis, exact match and fingerprinting. Once the tool detects some sensitive data, it use context for narrowing the content down, increasing the accuracy of detection and in reducing false positives.
Skyhigh is another DLP tool, and it extends the ability of an organization to protect against loss of data to the data stored in the cloud. With Skyhigh, DLP policies are enforced in a real-time manner, and we are provided with the capability to carry out an on-demand scan for the data which has been stored in the cloud so as to know whether we have some data outside the cloud policy. When configuring the DLP policies, you can choose a number of policy actions such as quarantine, alert, tombstone, or maybe choose to block the sensitive data from being uploaded to the cloud service. With Skyhigh, you are free to leverage the policies which you have created in other DLP solutions such as the EMC, Symantec, Websense and Intel McAfee using a closed loop remediation.
Symantec is also another tool which provides mechanism for data loss prevention in the cloud. It has partnered with Box, which is an online tool for file sharing and this improves the functionality of the tool. The tool is also expected to extend the data loss prevention of sensitive data which has been stored on mobile devices.

Cloud Mobile Media

The increase in the popularity of mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones, coupled with increase in popularity of the wireless internet has led to an increase in demand for rich media experience. The trend has also led to increase in mobile traffic, majority of it being video data. However, the use of mobile video is associated with some challenges. First, mobile devices have limited on-board resources for coding of intense media and processing tasks. Secondly, the wireless channel is unreliable and time varying, limiting the bandwidth for communication between the mobile devices and content delivery systems working in the backend. There is a greater need for us to balance between the increasing demand for mobile media applications and the weaknesses of the available media delivery networks.

The design of the mobile media network is determined by the trade-off between the quality of service (Qos) and cost. The initial cost of setting up the mobile media network and the subsequent maintenance costs should be kept as low as possible. If the cost too much, it will be equivalent to the price of the service, and this will negatively affect how the mobile media penetrates or is adapted by the end users. Also, the quality of service has to be kept high as this is what the end users will need to be provided with so that they can be happy with what they pay for. For this balance to happen, new ideas and emerging trends have to be embraced.

Recently, the cloud computing technology has introduced mechanisms for reducing the cost of deploying a mobile media network. In a cloud computing environment, the system resources can be allocated in a dynamic manner so that the elastic demand of the application can be met in a real-time manner. The cloud-computing paradigm has began to enhance the experience of mobile media, and this is where the cloud mobile media has resulted from.

However, the concept of cloud mobile media has introduced new challenges. An example of such a challenge is that the cloud computing platforms are usually built on the off-the-shelf platform whose performance and reliability cannot be said to be good. Also, the cloud leads to concerns regarding security and privacy of data. However, most of these challenges are as a result of dealing with data in mobile.

The following are some of the technical challenges facing the cloud mobile media network:

  1. Scalability- the system should be in a position to handle many users, devices and a large content.
  2. Heterogeneity- the content which can be supported should be of a diverse format, while the users should possess diverse preferences, and the devices should be of diverse forms.
  3. Reliability- failures do occur with systems. There is a need for the system to be designed in a redundant form so that services may be offered even after failures have occurred. Even when the unreliable wireless channels develop issues, the system should continue offering services to the end users.
  4. Usability- the system should be designed so as to support the various users using the various forms of technology. The user interface should be easy to learn, intuitive, and made to suit mobile devices having limited interactive options.
  5. Security- privacy and management of digital rights privacy are a serious challenge in cloud mobile media solutions.

The design of the cloud mobile media should be done in such a way that it will meet the increasing demands of the users. However, the problem is that there are limited resources for implementation of this. However, mechanisms have been implemented for solving such problems. Mobile cloud edge can help you in connecting the mobile devices which are resource-constrained to the cloud infrastructure which is rich in resources. Examples of these include WIFI access points, base stations and some other wireless edge devices.

Cloud computing security: things you must know

One of the best game-changing revolutions of this particular era is Cloud Computing. The shift far from original on-premises applications and also data storage is undoubtedly well underway, with customers, small and middle sized companies, and big businesses putting data and applications into the cloud. The current issue is will it be secure to do this? Cloud Computing protection is undoubtedly the greatest concern amongst all those who are thinking about the technology. And when you are an IT manager, then it is great to be paranoid. Massive Losses from attack and cyber crime can be tremendous, and also the 2008 CSI Computer Security and Crime Survey demonstrate a standard average yearly damage of just below $300,000.

It might appear like the leap of trust to place your precious applications and data in the cloud, and even to believe in Cloud Computing security and safety to a 3rd party. However, belief is not a part of the situation, and neither ought it to be. Each and every business requirements to realize that its applications and data are safe and secure and the issue of the cloud computing protection should be tackled. The cloud comes with several security benefits.

Based on NIST, this particular cloud computing security benefits consist of:

-Moving public data to an external cloud decreases the publicity of delicate inner data
-Cloud homogeneity tends to make security testing/auditing easier
-Clouds allow automatic security management
-Disaster/Redundancy Recovery

All factors are effectively used. Cloud companies normally have a tendency to consist of rigorous cloud computing security as a part of their particular company models, frequently a lot more than an individual user might perform. To that end, it is not only an issue of the cloud computing companies implementing greater security measure, but the thing is, instead, that they deploy the safety precautions which individual companies ought to, however frequently do not.

The majority of application providers enforce a few standard of security for their applications, even though whenever cloud application providers apply their amazing strategies to Cloud Computing protection. Issues happen across international privacy laws and regulations, exposure of data to international choices, stovepipe solutions to authentication and role- dependent accessibility, and even leaks in the multi-tenant architectures.

Exceptional physical security from the Cloud Computing companies:
Deficiency of physical security is the trigger of a huge quantity of damage, and also insider attacks are the reason for the remarkably big percentage of damage. Even though the specter of the black hats cracking into your network from an underdeveloped country is certainly much real, it’s not uncommon that, the “black hat” is, in fact, a dependable employee. It is the person from accounting department with whom you have lunch. It is the woman who else gives you coffee early in the morning and remembers that you prefer two sugars. It is the latest college grad with a lot possible, who else does this type of great work on that final report.

Outstanding security from the cloud:
Apart from physical security measure, technical security is of the highest value. Hosting your individual applications and servers needs additional steps. A bigger business may need to employ dedicated IT employees for protection exclusively. Cloud computing, on the Furthermore, forms cloud computing protection straight into the cloud platform. While the business nevertheless should maintain private security in any situation, the provider makes sure that the data and applications are secure from attack. You no need to be worried about your data protection if you have cloud-based technology. Your data and applications will be risk-free.

Top 10 Advantages of Cloud Technology

In this IT world, cloud computing is evolving rapidly from an upcoming solution into a practical alternate choice for several small to medium type of companies. For any developing company, one of the hardest things to perform is to maintain capital expenses in check. Cloud computing is a way to get into business – grade IT that might or else be excessively expensive to buy and maintain.

Here listed below is a short list of top 10 advantages of cloud computing:

1. Cost benefits:
In the existing economic, companies require low priced and high production. A cloud solution is an action in that path. It decreases costs without having sacrificing productivity. Aided by the cloud; generally, there will be no upfront investments in software or hardware.

2. Entry to your Data – Anywhere, Anytime and even with Any Device:
The users of Cloud solutions can access into their particular applications and data anywhere, anytime and from any device in the cloud computing technology. Just because data is utilized over the Internet on the servers of your cloud provider and management has 24/7 accessibility whenever and wherever they require.

3. Scalability:
Scalability is the leading cause for that business to run their company quickly. Several periodic business processes undergo intervals of dangerous activity; however this activity slows down substantially whenever the busy season is expired. Cloud- dependent solutions may increase as a small business the resources.

4. Protection:
The particular cloud technology is safe through cyber-terrorist, bugs, and accidents. It may very easily pay for all sorts of protective steps such as patch management, filtering and also cryptography techniques. Cloud technology safeguards your data and even keeps you like a long-term client.

5. Leveling of the playing field:
Cloud computing has a significant role for leveling the particular playing field between small and large businesses having a “spend on what you use only” model. Medium to small sized businesses no more needs to pay out a lot of money to be able to purchase IT infrastructure that can be compared to major companies. Right now they may only rent what they require in the cloud.

6. Management control:
The particular cloud dependent technology assists in allowing managers for superior monitoring in their business with their employees. The managers may gain access to data exactly what their employees are working on and may examine the job much faster with increased effectively.

7. Greater Innovation, Efficiency, and Functionality
With the cloud computing technology, you require waiting around for many years for your next update. You can begin operating new applications in a few days or perhaps hours.

8. Disaster Recovery and even Backup:
With the assistance of cloud technology, you can keep your company’s data securely on a secure data center instead of the server room. While reducing the power as a result of earthquakes, hurricanes or even a construction employee cutting down the power lines, you are back once again at the work as long as you own an internet connection.

9. Ease of use:
Getting rid of the need to purchase and configure new software and hardware enables your workers, and also, your IT department, to pay attention to the projects that will positively straight boost your earnings and develop your business.

10. Flexibility:
Cloud computing technology assists your company to select just exactly what your business requires, whenever you need it. You may pick a CRM tool, choose the Internet as the platform, and buy email marketing software, financial services software or even a host of other available choices for your business.

Different Solutions to Data Protection

Data protection reliability and solutions are top points for any company with vision crucial digital information. Security and safety for digital resources include numerous components working in agreement, such as disaster recovery, accessibility protection from attack devastating damage, and also archival services. Quite simply, reliable data should be safe from both illegal accessibility or even vandalism and also the damage of physical devices, plus it is easily accessible to fulfill company requirements.

Data protection solutions can be found in numerous levels and will be offering company continuity and even data management effectiveness. IP or Intellectual property, protection is a supporting aim to make sure the company continuity.

At Application Level:

Security and safety can happen at the program or application level. This particular level relates to all those security solutions that are invoked in the interface among applications. Like an application may safeguard data without having an encrypted password; the security support provides this data. Whenever the information is used by receiving an application, an additional element of the particular service can quickly authenticate the user, permitting security protocols to occur in the code of an application.

Some other good examples of data protection solutions present in the application level are privacy services and data integrity solutions. Data could be encrypted by a program after that it is just decrypted whenever entered once again by that application to determine privacy parameters. Transmitted data could be examined by a receiving application for changes to the content to make sure the data integrity.

The IT Level and the Middleware:

Data protection solutions in this particular level might appear like ERP (enterprise resource planning) programs which might work as an umbrella across the organizational systems. This particular umbrella offers a constant security definition for every element, even though you may not this is a useful resource for significantly various department functions, for example, customer relationship versus accounting management or even distribution. Data access processes might almost all happen below this unique umbrella without having an activity of data outdoors of the limitations of the business network and even IT infrastructure.

Within Data Itself:

One potential upcoming way of data protection solutions concentrates on the incorporation of the security features in data files themselves. Security and authorization systems could be packed with a data file, including a level of security that might stay even though a file was jeopardized. Like several PDF files consist of an internal password and encryption challenges which safeguard its content, despite the fact that the file by itself will be or else available with a secure PDF reader.

Attempts for Your Data Protection:

Data protection solutions could be concentrated on more IP protection. Getting entry to mission crucial data is a primary element of company continuity. For that reason disaster recovery is an essential portion of data dependability.

Data that is available on an individual physical device or even in several media that are situated in the similar building operates the threat of enormous damage can be it from vandalism, fire or even natural disaster.

Remote solutions could be reached via safe internet connections, and they are an ideal supplement to dependability issues. Like a prolonged power outage or even equipment failure may make the data on the server useless for the time. Getting a backup that could be accessible to any laptop with an internet connection which returns data to the users’ hands rapidly and more efficiently.

As the data protection solutions carry on to develop together with IT technology, companies may much better depend on the dependability and protection of very sensitive data and even intellectual property. There are numerous solutions to data protection that can make you safe regarding your data and company privacy.

Best 6 Cloud Computing Security Matters

Do people understand what cloud computing is? Cloud computing is actually a particular system which saves money while still providing you the power over controlling the needs of the company. You can gain access to these essential services as required over the internet when building through one to some other, when also having a safe solution for your company needs. As the cloud computing technology develops, and much more companies consider shifting their businesses in to cloud, one of the best issues which are brought up frequently is security measure. Will be the cloud truly safe?

The truth is that keeping your data in your cloud is much like, or maybe more, safe compared to maintaining your data in conventional infrastructure. Such as conventional infrastructure, still like a good consumer in inclusion to an expert you require to get into account for an extended list of security check factors. These check factors stand for possible cracks in your personal cloud infrastructure protection, and you will simply want to shore up these to maintain your data as secure as this can be.

1. Your employees:
Regrettably, the top risks to each conventional protection and cloud hosting can be the types right below your nose. Seek the services of employees who are reliable and rely on your instincts. You shouldn’t be hesitant to assess your staff for correct utilization of the internet sources. Make pro-security plans, teach your employees on these ideas, and implement them.

2. Passwords:
Your own staff should safeguard their security passwords. Gather your amazing IT system ensuring that regular password changes are frequent and inspire solid and complex passwords. Particularly weak passwords offer uncomplicated access for people that want to grab your private information and facts.

3. Firewalls:
Set up solid hardware and software firewalls to maintain your data safe and out of the hands of individuals that do not have business with this. This may need preventing well-known websites from staff use. You shouldn’t be hesitant to get this done. Browsing the Web must not be a choice throughout the time.

4. Data Back-up:
Cloud hosting allows all of your data files to get backed up. In case, you want to keep a few data from the cloud, still it is heading to be essential that you maintain the firmly secured system for the back-up. Off-site backup is generally the most safe choice in this particular scenario.

5. Software Patches:
Regardless of which operating system you are operating, each and every software program utilized in your company really need to be maintained updated directly by installing patches as they are launched from your software supplier.

6. Access Management:
Cloud hosting is usually a fantastic method of keeping data; however it is ineffective in case proper care is not utilized to safeguard control access and outlets. Mobile phones permit this to be easy to work through virtually any place, an excellent they are kept unprotected, they offer for uncomplicated accessibility to anyone who else pertains to take them.

Bottom Line:
You might want to evaluate Wikipedia’s section on the cloud computing security. They have a useful resources and information for your knowledge. Cloud processing protection had been outlined as on the list of best Seven Cloud Processing Should Haves by the Cloud Provider USA.

The cloud undoubtedly will be the potential future. Security is one of the greatest cloud computing service should haves. Security dangers happen whether or not your data is saved on the cloud or even on the server throughout your back space. Correctly teaching staff and very carefully selecting and also require entry to your data together with the cloud ought to go some distance to maintaining cloud computing safe and an excellent choice for your business.

8 Scenarios around the Effective Utilization of Cloud Technology

Cloud technology is an effective tool that has influenced different businesses and enterprises. Every single company entity is exclusive with unique specifications. The cloud features a strong number of features that fulfill the requirements of various enterprises and people. In this article, we are going to provide you a list of eight scenarios that discover the extensive and diverse features of cloud technology.

1. E-commerce business:
An e-commerce business will simply achieve success in case the consumers go through a smooth and flawless shopping experience. It implies well-integrated payment gateway, faster downloads, a safe and secure environment.

2. Seasonal businesses:
You will find some seasonal businesses, which are functional just for a couple of months annually. Like a mango vendor from India will need to have web access for a few days of March to August. A Halloween mask supplier from the UNITED STATES will only perform quick business at the time of Halloween.

3. Established entities:
There are lots of traditional businesses that have a strong online infrastructure in place. Do these particular entities require moving to the cloud? The option is dependent on numerous aspects. One particular business might want to move almost all the email functions to the cloud. An additional might choose to have a careful strategy and shift to the cloud in a phased method, although some might opt to provide the cloud a miss.

4. Entrepreneurs and Start-ups:
Entrepreneurs and Start-ups have their personal issue sets to cope with. To begin with, a start-up business needs financing. Business capital firms, usually, do not desire to be burdened with fund tools. They would prefer to choose to invest in the entrepreneurs that are quick and agile on their feet. Furthermore, start-ups cannot manage to pay and are unable to spend large salaries for their technical employees. Cloud technology offers a good fit for these particular companies.

5. Technology businesses:
The expansion of Software has compelled technology companies willy-nilly to move to the cloud. Products are quickly becoming solutions and the easiest way to offer these is the cloud. Versatility in running environment, a mixture of different software and resources, and a very easily maintained back end a few explanations why technology businesses should tag the cloud.

6. Social media companies:
Who else does not wish to be the following Twitter? Or even Facebook for that issue. The issue is that for each and every prosperous Facebook you will find a thousand breakdowns. Establishing infrastructure for this kind of nebulous entities is taking once life. Scaling up with the requirement and making the transaction on real use, is the just method onward for these businesses.

7. Video and Music download ventures:
There is certainly a varied mixture of entities that are dabbling with video and music downloads. They might not be as titanic as YouTube; however, they grab up massive amounts of resources flexible payment gateways, streaming capability. Speedy downloads and requirement for security and even hack-free environment can just only be established by the cloud technology.

8. Gaming portal:
A particular gaming portal is not almost all games and fun. There might be the demand, a scale up for the gargantuan size whenever you are coping with geographically distributed, multi-player, graphic-intensive atmosphere. These types of particular specifications are hard to handle. How does the cloud technology remain true to this challenging environment?

Bottom line:
All of these eight scenarios tend to be playing out continually almost everywhere on the internet. Seasoned business owners, Entrepreneurs as well as a large number of university students are mulling over cloud conundrum.