The 6/14 Virtualization Security Podcast we spoke about firewall placement within the virtual environment as well as storage based defense in depth. While we covered Encryption on the 5/31 podcast, in the 6/14 podcast we covered other measures when dealing with storage (which will be part of a followup post). This conversation was slightly different than all other firewall discussions, as it was about migrating from a physical environment to a virtual environment, and keeping the same firewall placements. Spurred by a customer, we sought to come to a set of guidelines to follow for defense in depth within the virtual as well as physical and hybrid cloud environments.
TVP Category Archives
Defense in Depth: Encryption within the Virtual Environment
The 5/31 Virtualization Security Podcast we spoke to High Cloud Security about encryption as a defense in depth, and where to place encryption within the virtual environment. This lead to an intriguing discussion about what is actually missing from current virtual environments when it comes to encryption. We can encrypt within each VM and we can encrypt within the networking fabric, as well as within the drives themselves, but currently that leaves several vulnerabilities and unencrypted locations that can be used as attack points. While we concentrated on vSphere, what we are discussing applies equally to all hypervisors.
Moving to the Cloud as a Service or as a Machine
One of the decisions faced by anyone that wishes to have a cloud presence is what will be moved to the cloud, why, and whether or not there is a service that can be used instead of using virtual machines. Give The Virtualization Practice’s case, we plan on moving our customer facing VMs to the cloud, but what are those machines? The most important are a Web Server with a split LAMP stack, a Mail Server, and DNS.
Cloud Security Alliance: STAR and other Initiatives
The 5/17 Virtualization Security Podcast was an open forum on the Cloud Security Alliance initiatives, specifically the Security, Trust, & Assurance Registry (STAR). Which is “a free, publicly accessible registry that documents the security controls provided by various cloud computing offerings.” The CSA has grown from a grass roots organization to a major player and producer or guidance for security and compliance for clouds.
Teenager's View of Cloud Security: Expectations of Privacy
The 5/3 Virtualization Security Podcast had a very special guest, a teenager. This surprise guest told us about how she and her friends use their smartphones and cloud services such as FaceBook, Twitter, SMS, etc. For the panelist, it gave us a new look at our existing problems; expanding our viewpoint for end-user computing security, cloud security, and expectations of privacy.
End User Computing: Protecting Data From the Device
Some of us have multiple cloud endpoints in the form of mobile devices all trying to access our personal and corporate data to do our daily jobs. These incredibly useful devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.) are now a part of our organizations life. So how do we protect our data from them. IBM recently took a draconian measure of banning Siri from their employees iPhones. Yet, how can they enforce such a measure?