The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article on the United States General Services Administration has approved the acquisition of some cloud services for use by the Federal Government including many of the Google Apps such as Gmail, Google Docs, etc. Since these services are for sale as well as freely available this sounds more like an admission that they can be used. Will other governments follow suit? But should they be used? That is really the question.
There are two sides to any government, the classified and the unclassified. These are general terms that quantify how the government can use services. While all services require quite a bit of security, classified utilization requires even more, in many cases what most would consider to be “uber-security” requirements. The types of requirements that impact usability in some way. Can these tools provide adequate security?
TVP Category Archives
This Week in Virtualization Security News
The Virtualization Security Podcast on 7/22 was all about the news of the week with our panelists discussing how this news affects everyone and anyone with respect to Virtualization Security. The news discussed:
* NIST Released their Guide to Security for Full Virtualization Technologies (Draft)
* There is a Security issue with VMware vSphere 4.1
* VMware discussed the new vShield Zones Edge and vShield App products
* HyTrust and Catbird announced a cooperative effort
Implementing Policy in the Virtual Environment and Cloud
When you read books on virtualization, cloud computing, security, or software product sheets a common word that shows up is Policy. Tools often claim to implement Policy, while books urge you to read or write your Policy. But what does Policy imply?
Webster (webster.com) defines policy as:
1 a : prudence or wisdom in the management of affairs b : management or procedure based primarily on material interest
2 a : a definite course or method of action selected from among alternatives and in light of given conditions to guide and determine present and future decisions b : a high-level overall plan embracing the general goals and acceptable procedures especially of a governmental body
When you read policy in product literature and books we are looking at definition number 2 and often a over b. But what does this mean to those who administer and run virtual environments or make use of cloud services?
Virtualization Security Team-Ups
Catbird and HyTrust have teamed up to deliver a product that provides front-end access and compliance control for well understood actions via HyTrust, for all other actions, including intrusions, Catbird Security provides compliance control, firewall, IDS, and IPS. In other words, proactive security via HyTrust and reactive security via Catbird.
vSphere 4.1 Released – More Dynamic Resource Load Balancing
With the release of vSphere 4.1, VMware has added to their Dynamic Resource Load Balancing (DRLB) suite of tools that I hinted at in my post on Dynamic Resource Load Balancing that I wrote last week as well as providing new memory over commit and other functionality. In essence, vSphere 4.1 is more than a point release, this update includes many features that aid in security, reliability, and is a direct response to customer requests.
Safe way to Encrypt within a VM – Need for Technology
Encryption is important, encryption within a VM even more important. But the question is how to do this securely without allowing the encryption keys to be seen by an administrator of the virtual environment and that supports vMotion or LiveMigration. The solution is per VM encrypted memory, but something more robust that makes use of hardware, out of band key exchange, and supports vMotion or LiveMigration.