Cloud Computing - Is It Safe?

Summary show

There are essentially two kinds of computing environments:

On-premises computing is the traditional form in which you or your company own and manage your systems. All the applications you use and your data files are in your computers on your premises, either on individual PCs or an in-house local area network. In cloud computing, by contrast, your applications and files are held remotely on the Internet (cyberspace) in a web of servers that a third party operates.

You access applications and work on your files from your PC simply by logging on to the network. Cloud services are provided by cloud-hosting providers, such as Google, Amazon, Oracle Cloud, Rackspace, Microsoft Azure, etc. There is nothing fundamentally new about the concept of cloud services. If you use Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo for your emails, you are using cloud services and probably have been for years.

What is relatively new is the types of services that are being offered in a cloud environment. These now go far beyond email to cover all the IT services that an on-premises computing environment would deliver, such as accounting, marketing, human resources, etc.

Advantages of cloud computing

Cloud computing has several advantages over on-premises computing:

1) Using any computer, You can run an application or access your files from anywhere globally.

2) Cloud computing is cheaper.

3) You need less technical knowledge.

4) Cloud computing delivers better performance.

5) Cloud computing is eminently scalable. Increasing the number of applications you use or the amount of data you store does not require a heavy investment; you only need to advise the cloud-hosting adviser.

Given these advantages, it is no surprise that there has been widespread rapid adoption of cloud computing over the last few years. As a result, analysts estimate the growth rate of all spending on the cloud. IT will soon be at least four times faster than the growth rate of all spending on on-premises computing. Indeed, analysts expect the annual growth rate of spending on cloud computing to average 23.5% compound from now until 2017. In addition, by that year, spending on cloud services will probably account for one-sixth of all spending on IT products, such as applications, system infrastructure software, and basic storage.

Given the rapid growth in cloud computing, the big question is whether cloud computing is safe. Is it more or less safe than on-premises computing? The short answer is that cloud computing is not less secure than on-premises computing. However, the threats are somewhat different, though they converge.

Threats

Generally speaking, there are six major threats to computer security. These are:

Malware – is malicious software such as viruses, trojans, worms, spyware, and zombies. Malware is installed on either a PC in your home office or a cloud-computing server. Where malware gives control of a network of computers to a malicious group (e.g., to send spam), it is called a botnet. Web app attack – is an attack in which web-based applications are targeted. It is one of the most common forms of attack on the Internet.

Brute force attack – tries all possible combinations of letters or numbers to discover a cipher or secret key. You could crack a password by repeatedly trying to guess it. Modern computing power and speed make brute force a viable form of attack. Recon – is a reconnaissance activity that is used to choose victims that are both vulnerable and valuable.

A vulnerability scan – is an exploit using a special program to access weaknesses in computers, systems, networks, or applications to generate information for planning an attack. App attack – is an attack against an application or service that is not running on the web, i.e., the program will be on a computer somewhere.

Honeypots

A honeypot is a decoy website, network, system, or application intentionally designed to be vulnerable to attack. Its purpose is to gather information about attackers and how they work.

Honeypots allow researchers to:

collect data on new and emerging malware and determine trends in threats
identify the sources of attacks, including details of their IP addresses
determine how attacks take place and how best to counteract them
determine attack signatures (pieces of code that are unique to particular parts of malware) so that anti-virus
the software can recognize them
develop defenses against specific threats
Honeypots have proved to be invaluable in erecting defenses against hackers.

The Spring 2014 Cloud Security Report

Alert Logic provides security services for both on-premises and cloud computing systems. The company began issuing cloud security reports in 2012. Its Spring 2014 Cloud Security Report covers the year ending 30 September 2013. This report is based on real-world security incidents experienced by Alert Logic’s customers and data gathered from a series of honeypots the company set up worldwide. The report throws some interesting light on the security of on-premises and cloud computing relating to the company’s customers. Here are some of the highlights: