Cloud Tenant PCI-DSS Dilemma

There is a dilemma for all tenants of a public or private cloud: Scope. For the tenant, they want everything to be in scope. For the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) they want to limit scope to the bare minimum. What does it mean for a Cloud to be ‘PCI Compliant’ and why is this a requirement for some tenants. The real issue, is what is in scope for PCI-DSS while your data is in the cloud and how can you as the tenant meet those requirements.

How VirtuStream does Cloud Security

On the 4/4 Virtualization Security Podcast, Pete Nicoletti, the chief information security officer for Virtustream, joined us to discuss how VirtuStream does cloud security. VirtuStream runs some of, if not the largest SAP installations in the cloud for very large enterprises around the world. The key to VirtuStream is that they are an Enterprise Cloud that looks at everything from the Enterprise perspective, whether that is billing or security. For security, they have implemented many changes required by their customers and allowed the end-enterprise to dial that security to 11 if necessary. But what does VirtuStream do that is different from all others?

Technology Update from the Field

There have been a spate of press releases and news in and around the industry over the last few weeks that bear further consideration. They could actually solve some of your current cloud and virtual environment issues while opening new doors for future expansion. As an architect and analyst I find these technology very interesting for their possible impact of the future of virtual and cloud environment not to mention data center designs.

SDDC and the Ever Expanding Control Plane

The software defined data center has the potential to expand the control plane well outside of anyone’s control by the simple fact that we do not yet have a unified control mechanism for disparate hardware (networking, storage, and compute), for disparate hypervisors (vSphere, KVM, Xen, Hyper-V), new types of hypervisors (storage and networking), and new ideas at managing SDDC at scale.

Security is not compliance and compliance will not get you security. Or does it?

Security is not compliance and compliance will not get you security. At least that is what I hear from security teams. Conversations with security focal team members from non-security focal people can be quite interesting and has its unique challenges and hurtles to overcome. You can find yourself speaking the same language but not fully understanding each other very well at all. One topic point of discussion is that “security is not compliance and compliance will not get you security.” Or does it?

Training and More Training for EUC Security

End User Computing security seems to be in the hands of the users not actually the IT Security department. At least not yet. So what can we do about this? IT security can be draconian and not allow EUC devices into the office, but the users will be up in arms. They use their smart …