I came away from HP Protect 2013 wondering if current security sold by the traditional security players will actually scale to the hybrid cloud? Are these security tools still system-centric or are they moving to data-, user-, and app-centric? I feel that this move has started but has far to go. I do not think many of the current batch of traditional security services implemented in data centers today can scale properly.
TVP Strategy Archives
Edward L. Haletky, aka Texiwill, is an analyst, author, architect, technologist, and out-of-the-box thinker. As an analyst, Edward looks at all things IoT, big data, cloud, security, and DevOps. As an author, he has written about virtualization and security. As an architect, Edward creates peer-reviewed reference architectures for hybrid cloud, cloud-native applications, and many other aspects of the modern business. As a technologist, Edward creates code prototypes for parts of those architectures. Edward is solving today’s problems in an implementable fashion.
Security Questions from VMworld 2013
While at VMworld 2013, I started to ask 5 security questions that have been bothering me for some time now. Some of these questions apparently have no answers currently and others only have operational answers, no technology. Security of a secure hybrid cloud is a mix of procedures, policies, operations, and technology. These questions are about various aspects of virtual and cloud environments that have been nagging at me for some time now as well as problems I have faced managing our own cloud instances. Perhaps you have questions you would like to add to the list, if so please share.
Hyper-V Security: 5nine Software
On the 9/5 Virtualization Security Podcast we discussed Hyper-V Security and were joined by Alex Kibkalo, a former senior architect at Microsoft who works as a Director of Product Management in 5nine Software. 5nine Software has developed the first introspective virtualization security device for Hyper-V and is a very large step forward. Introspective security has been missing from Hyper-V for a number of years, while it was possible to implement, the market has been so small that is was not feasible until now. Which implies Hyper-V is gaining adherents so has a need for better security measures.
VMware NSX Conversations
At VMworld 2013 and on the Virtualization Security Podcast there were many conversations about VMware NSX. These conversations ranged from how will we implement this new technology to security, scale, and other technical questions. In addition, NSX and what was needed to make it a reality may be the answer to a nagging security question. Brad Hedlund, from the VMware NSX team, joined the Virtualization Security Podcast to share with us some of the details around VMware NSX prior to the podcast.
Validate throughout the Stack: AFORE CypherX
When we look at the secure hybrid cloud, there seems to be a missing piece, a piece that is used to validate identity via the role based access control assigned to applications, data, and systems allowed to access that is dynamic instead of normal static firewall rules that are either port or vm-centric. The software defined data center needs security to move with it and not remain static. Yes we could manipulate the rules on the fly, but those manipulations require that we know who is using a particular VM at a given time and in the case of a server, the VM could be used by more than one user at a time, so we need something more dynamic. Privileged access to data needs to be enforced throughout the stack and not just within an application or by encrypting data. This is a key component of the software defined data center.
Next Generation Data Protection: HotLink DR Express
The next generation of data protection is not just about backup or replication into and out of the cloud, but about inexpensive recovery directly into a cloud in a hypervisor agnostic manner. Recovery is the key to backup and while we spend many hours ensuring that our backups happen in a timely manner, we spend very little time testing those backups and ensuring that recovery can happen at any time for any workload, not just those that are mission critical. Next generation data protection must also be extremely simple to use, setup, and configure. Is your data protection tool a next generation tool or lost in the past somewhere?