Defense in Depth: Intelligence Gathering

Intelligence gathering is an oft overlooked aspect of system and data defense in depth. On the 7/12 Virtualization Security podcast we discussed new and old sources of such intelligence. We were joined by Urvish Vashi, VP of marketing, Alert Logic. Alert Logic has updated their report on cloud based security attacks. Add to this the yearly Verizon Breach and other reports, and we start to have a good handle on intelligence of past and possibly future attacks.

Proving Identity in the Cloud

Unlike last year where there were many virtualization security vendors existed at RSA Conference, there was a noticeable lack of them within booths, yet all of them were here to talk to existing and potential customers. However, there were many vendors offering identity management in the cloud for these I asked the identity management product owners the following question:
How can you prove identity in the cloud?

Cloud Computing Providers — are they content providers or carriers?

Last month Verizon expanded its Computing as a Service (CaaS) cloud computing offering. The expansion itself is not surprising. The interesting tidbit is that Verizon has Carrier Status and therefore different laws apply to them than any other cloud provider that does not have this status, such as Amazon EC2, Terramark, etc. Will cloud computing providers be the next internet service provider? If so will they have to battle to not be responsible for the content within their clouds, as did internet service providers with the battle that ensued over the Communications Decency Act?