Cloud Security: Is it all Jurisdictional and Audit Issues?

When you read many blogs and articles on cloud security, writers such as myself often mention jurisdictional issues as a big problem. Nor is the ability to Audit clouds the only problem. Yet both of these are huge issues for clouds today, but fundamentally, is the cloud flawed from a security point of view or are there plenty of security mechanisms available?

Cloud and Virtualization Security Resolutions for 2012

Christmas is over and New Years is on its way. A time to make resolutions and see the year complete. A time to review what is old and plan for the future. This is a perfect time to review your defense in depth and look to see if there are security additions needed in 2012. So what cloud and virtualization security New Years resolutions should I make for 2012?

Year in Review – Virtualization Security

2011 saw a shift in how virtualization security was viewed and it showed in the way companies teamed up to address those needs. Even so, the most basic of issues still exist: The thought that once you virtualize you are more secure, and the lack of general protection for the management constructs of a virtual or hybrid environment. These two concepts have hindered adoption of virtualization security in 2011. Even so, there has been a steady shift through out the year as more and more companies talk about virtualization security. VMware has definitely lead the pack with its vShield Product line and its unified view of virtualization security. Other hypervisor vendors are also discussing virtualization security through their ecosystem if not directly. 2011 saw many companies forging their own partnerships to augment and compete in this space. Will these partnerships continue into 2012? Will virtualization security continue to be a hot area?

Virtualization Security Announcements: Architecture Concerns

There have been a large number of Announcements that have been made for VMworld Copenhagen with respect to virtualization and cloud security. This shows quite an interesting growth in the market, and that even 1 month apart there is still more to be announced within the virtual and cloud security spaces. There are three very interesting announcements that show further integration between vendors.

Collaborations abound at VMworld 2011

If there was one thing I saw and heard about at VMworld, was the number of third party collaborations that were taking place. While not explicitly stated by VMware at VMworld, the show floor had many different collaborations that were taking place. This level of collaboration shows a level of maturity within the virtualization and cloud vendor ecosystems. A maturity, that shows that the vendors understand the benefits of leveraging other companies to lower their overall costs while producing better and more attractive products. Some of the collaborations I saw where purely the resale of products, while others were integrations between products.

Trend Micro: Info Graphic on Journey to the Cloud

Trend Micro provided us a very interesting info graphic on a Journey to the Public Cloud with a list of which of their tools secure that Journey. What is interesting about this info graphic is the steps outlined in this journey to the Cloud and the threats and issues as you step along this path. These steps are well thought out and are useful to everyone as they look at their virtualization and cloud security options moving forward.