News: Sky High Networks provides Cloud Service Security Ratings

There has been a dearth of intelligence reporting on cloud services and up until now we had to rely upon the Verizon Breach Report, Alert Logic’s State of the Cloud report, the Enisa and other reports, but even so there was nothing specifically about a given cloud service outside the lightly used Cloud Security Alliances STAR self-certification. Instead you must imply something about a given service. This has changed. Meeting this need is Sky High Networks.

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.

Offering Cloud Services: Why is it so Limited?

There are many SaaS and Security SaaS cloud services out there, but they all lack one thing: full visibility. Why do these cloud offerings limit the ability to perform compliance auditing, forensics, and basic auditing against an organizations data retention, protection, and other necessary policies? Why not just grant the “right to audit”, or better yet, build a way for each tenant to perform their own audit down to the hardware? Why limit this by leaving it out of contracts as well as the technology? It is all feasible.