1 / 14

Practical tips for securing your cloud

Practical tips for securing your cloud. James Turner, IBRS Advisor August 2012. Warning. This presentation has a lot of pictures of clouds. Practical tips to securing your cloud. Defining the cloud What IBRS clients are asking & What the experts say Four interesting areas of risk Summary

melva
Download Presentation

Practical tips for securing your cloud

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Practical tips for securing your cloud James Turner, IBRS Advisor August 2012

  2. Warning • This presentation has a lot of pictures of clouds

  3. Practical tips to securing your cloud • Defining the cloud • What IBRS clients are asking & What the experts say • Four interesting areas of risk • Summary • A glimpse of the future • Questions

  4. Defining cloud • The most widely accepted definition of cloud comes from the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) : • On demand self-service • Broad network access • Resource pooling • Rapid elasticity • Pay-per-use measured service • I’m talking about SaaS Morning Glory clouds – Gulf of Carpentaria. Source: NASA. Credit: Mick Petroff

  5. What IBRS clients are asking & what the experts say • “Review our SaaS contracts for technical risks” • Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) • availability of data and business functionality; • protecting data from unauthorised access; and, • handling security incidents. • Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) • Liability • Performance management • Ending the arrangement • National Archives of Australia

  6. Four SaaS vendor contract reviews • Findings – there are 4 core areas of risk in these vendor MSAs: • Light on specifics • Heavy on indemnity • Default customer referencing • Flimsy data portability

  7. Light on specifics • Will protect customer data “in a manner consistent with general industry standards reasonably applicable” • Will use “commercially reasonable efforts to make the purchased services available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week”. • Impact: nothing to hold them to! Light and wispy cirrus clouds

  8. Heavy on indemnity • They will not be held liable for any loss of data, or revenue, or profits. • Service credits, if available, are like eating lettuce • You expend more energy chewing than you get from the consumption • Impact: nothing to hold them to! • (and look at how well that worked in the software industry!)

  9. Customer reference by default • “Customer agrees to work with <vendor’s> Marketing Department to produce a news release to Customer’s use of the Service” • Risks of being outed as a customer: • “kick me” • Collateral damage • Target rich environment • Economy of effort for attackers • Impact: what has this done to your risk profile?

  10. Flimsy data portability • Only 1 of the 4 mentioned a format • Proprietary data formats help create lock-in • One source of truth? • Migrating to another vendor? • Who owns the metadata? • Can you access security logs? • Impact: Vendor lock in, paying for migration, rivals being sold your work Storm front over Phillip Island, Nov 11, 2011. Source: ABC.net.au

  11. Conclusion: Practical tips to securing your cloud • Understand the risks • Create a list of the technical risks • War game different scenarios, attacks, or failures • Walk these through with business stakeholders • Contract management • involved vs. committed? • Be biased toward vendors who commit to standards • Note: Take-it-or-leave-it contracts are positively viewed by some Asperatus Cloud, New Zealand, undated photo. Source: National Geographic

  12. An interconnected world... ... leads to exponential complexity and unforeseen interdependencies!

  13. Questions?

  14. References • “Cloud Computing Security Considerations”, Defence Signals Directorate (Australian Department of Defence), April 2011. • “Better Practice Guide: Negotiating the cloud – legal issues in cloud computing agreements”, Australian Government Information Management Office, February 2012. • “A Checklist for Records Management and the Cloud”, National Archives of Australia, 2011. • IBRS research: • "The Next Perfect IT Storm: The Red Shift, Utility Computing", IBRS, April 2008. • "Cloud computing, you may need a parachute", IBRS, April 2009. • "Legal considerations that apply in cloud computing", IBRS, May 2009. • "Cloud computing and the law - data considerations", IBRS, June 2009. • "Cloud computing and the law - business implication", IBRS, July 2009. • "A legal checklist before taking off into the cloud", IBRS, August 2009. • "APRA offers timely advice against losing your head in the cloud", IBRS, November 2010. • "Two tests to evaluate Cloud economics", IBRS, March 2011. • "A matrix for cloud computing risk analysis", IBRS, October 2011. • "Cloud security - the real risks", IBRS, January 2012. • “How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? Part 1”, IBRS, May 2012 • “How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? Part 2”, IBRS, July 2012

More Related