Virtualisation And Cloud Computing For Machine Security

The type of security to be deployed to protect this mission critical database once it is moved to an IaaS instance in a public cloud

Discuss about the Virtualisation and Cloud Computing for Machine Security.

Before discussing the benefits and issues that are related to the IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) cloud, it is important to know the basics of IaaS and what are the key roles of IaaS and how it is useful for other types of infrastructures such as PaaS and SaaS. PaaS and SaaS are hosted on top of the IaaS which directly says that, if there are any breaches in IaaS, it will directly impact both PaaS and SaaS (Veeramachaneni, 2015).

IaaS provides a set of resources such as storage, networks, servers, roll back virtual machines with which one can allow to run various application instances which will be available used to all the users who are connected to the internet. Once the platform is installed, users can freely install any application within the allocated resources that are made available to them. With IaaS, users have better control over security when compared to the other models till there are any loopholes in the virtual machine monitor. In this model, network and storage is generally controlled by the cloud service providers (Veeramachaneni, 2015).

Since the data will be shared on cloud, virtualization plays important role because virtualization will allow the users to share, create copies, migrate the data and roll back to the virtual machines if necessary that will allow to run multiple application instances. Hence, virtual machine security will become more important such as physical machine security. Unlike to physical servers, VMs have boundaries which are physical and virtual.

Security that has to deployed are:

• Usage of privileged access workstations (Microsoft, 2017).
• Usage of multi-factor authentication system
• Limit and constrain the administrative access to all the users
• Usage of DevTest Labs for better deploying and development processes
• Controlling and limiting endpoint access
• Usage of key management solution to secure the data on cloud.
• Encryption of virtual disks and also disk storage
• Usage of centralized security management system that will effectively control the applications from one end point (Microsoft, 2017).
• Management of operating systems that are been deployed.
• Installation of antimalware systems to manage threats and malwares.
• Always update and install latest security updates to mitigate security issues.
• Deployment of backup solution and also test the backup.

Benefits of IaaS:

• It allows IT to shift focus – it is very hard to maintain IT infrastructure if the organization is huge and IaaS makes it easy for an organization to handle bulk of data (The Researchpedia, 2017).
• IaaS is utility service model which says that one needs to pay per use or up to the subscription based.
• Dynamic scaling – one can easily scale up and down based on the application usage and this is best service if any organization has significant spikes.
• Multiple tenets – With IaaS, multiple users can access the same infrastructure at the same time.
• Reduces total cost of ownership.
• Flexible offerings in the infrastructure.

Issues with IaaS:

• Virtualization issues – Since the application is shared among all users, there are issues related to the shared environment.
• VM image sharing – VM image is used to instantiate VMs. Sharing of images in the image repositories will invite an attack on the VM.
• VM isolation – VMs that are running on the same physical device should be isolated so that the data breach doesn’t happen.
• VM escape, VM migration, VM rollback, VM sprawl are some other issues that are related to IaaS (Veeramachaneni, 2015). 

The issues that might appear while migrating the database to the cloud are:

1. With the database

• Sensitive data – all the organization have their data which are related to their own organization or the clients they operate with and the data is crucial. Data leakage at the time of migration process will cause the loss of data and also it is important to know which service which will be optimal for the organization (Bhopale, 2013).

1. With IaaS infrastructure – PaaS and SaaS models are built on top of IaaS model. So if there are any applications that are dependent on the IaaS model, it will be directly reflected in the other two models as well. This should be taken care of (Shaw, 2016).
2. Communication between Webb’s and IaaS database in cloud – to communicate between two entities, first the configuration process should be undergone in both the entities so that the data remains same and updated all the time. Misconfiguration in any of the entity will result in not being sync (Dawoud, Takouna, & Meinel, 2010).

Issues that are related to the backup of data are:

1. Backing up data to the cloud – data backup is one important issue that has to be dealt carefully. An unauthorized access or tampering of data on the cloud will eradicate original data that is present on the cloud and also shared with users.
2. Storage of data in the cloud – it is important for any organization to know where the storage or data centres should be made available so that the data will be accessible to all the users without any delay in time. And also, it is important to keep for every organization that the jurisdictions are different at different locations. Hence, it has to be kept in mind that the location centre will be critical (Moyle, 2013).

• Retrieval of data from cloud – to retrieve data from cloud, one needs to have internet connection and also needs to have authorization to be a part of the cloud. There might be couple issues such as unavailability of data because of cloud data breach, and at the point of time it is necessary to have backup made available to the users so that the data flows smoothly.

Webb’s stores is presently using tapes for backing up their data at different locations. Organization needs to pay or purchase tapes when the data size gets on increasing with the users and their related data. This will eventually increase the cost that has to be put in maintaining the database and also increases the complexity in maintaining the database at different location. Considering cloud approach, all the data will be on cloud and single source will help in maintaining data consistency across all locations and also it cloud is much less in cost as compared to the tapes.

With cloud architecture, it also mitigates of considering of backup of data every time because cloud itself provides a service with which data backup can be scheduled on daily or weekly basis which takes less time and also provides flexibility to the users and organization.

1. IaaS infrastructure:
   1. Proper configuration
   2. Backup of onsite data before migrating the data to cloud

• Single admin

1. Limit admin access to all the users
2. Monitor network and virtual machines

1. MS SQL Server 2012 R2 cloud instance
   1. Backing up of data in a physical device and needs authorization to access the data
   2. Update the data on daily basis so that the data remains in sync

• Make the data available as backup so that the clients or users doesn’t get issues while servers of cloud are down.

1. Cloud network architecture
2. Networks are monitored by the cloud service provider itself in IaaS model.
3. It is also important to go through the documentation process while receiving the service because the data might still be available with the service provider.
4. Cloud backup and restore infrastructure
5. Backup should be independent of all the applications that are running parallel in the virtual machine that are connected with all the users.
6. Backup data should be updated on timely basis and also should be tested so that it doesn’t consume time at the time of network errors in cloud.

• It is also important to note the restore time of cloud so that the users don’t get affected with non-availability of data at certain location and for that, depending on the location, backup plans have to be instantiated at all the data centres.

References

Bhopale, M. S. (2013). Cloud Migration Benefits and Its Challenges Issue. IOSR Journal of Computer Engineering (IOSR-JCE), 1(8), 40-45.

Dawoud, W., Takouna, I., & Meinel, C. (2010). Infrastructure as a service security: Challenges and solutions. The 7th International Conference on Informatics and Systems (INFOS) (pp. 1-8). IEEE.

Microsoft. (2017, August 29). Security best practices for IaaS workloads in Azure. Retrieved from Docs.microsoft.com: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/security/azure-security-iaas

Moyle, E. (2013, August). Storing data in the cloud: Addressing data location security issues. Retrieved from Searchcloudsecurity.techtarget.com: https://searchcloudsecurity.techtarget.com/tip/Storing-data-in-the-cloud-Addressing-data-location-security-issues

Shaw, D. (2016, August 7). Top 5 Cloud Storage Security Challenges. Retrieved from Nasuni.com: https://www.nasuni.com/top-5-cloud-storage-security-challenges/

The Researchpedia. (2017). Top 10 Benefits of IaaS. Retrieved from Theresearchpedia.com: https://www.theresearchpedia.com/research-articles/top-benefits-of-iaas

Veeramachaneni, V. K. (2015). Security Issues and Countermeasures in Cloud Computing Environment. International Journal of Engineering Science and Innovative Technology (IJESIT), 4(5), 82-93.