Page 171 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

D ANGERS ABOUND: SECURITY IN THE C L O UD

insulated from failures in other Availability Zones and provide
inexpensive, low latency network connectivity to other Avail-
ability Zones in the same Region. By launching instances in
separate Availability Zones, a user can protect their applica-
tions from failure of a single location. Regions consist of one
or more Availability Zones.” This points out another need in

cloud computing—a shared language so that each side knows
what the terms being used mean.
I’ve spent some time on Amazon’s outage because it illus-
trates several things about how cloud operations work and
don’t work. All the concerns that come to light with regard to
basic operations, then, are going to be magnified several times
when it comes to privacy and security. The Cloud Security Al-

liance urges in unvarnished terms that users should not as-
sume that cloud computing operates with all the layers of
protection that a business normally enjoys. Servers that you’re
using in the cloud are somewhat analogous to servers running
on your Web site. They’re just outside the protected perime-
ter of the business, with a Web server port or ports open to all
browser calls, all traffic, all comers.

Assume That the Cloud Is Less
Secure Than Your Data Center

IT managers call this area the DMZ, or demilitarized zone,
between, figuratively speaking, two competing parties on
the Web, in this case, a business on one side and the public
on the other. The “public” includes a certain number of virus
writers, script kiddies, and malware planters.

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