Methods Used for Protection of Data Stored in IaaS infrastructure and their Benefits
The process of creating a virtual edition of something or something, which is not real, is called virtualization. It allows a single hardware to use different operating systems. By this, a single system can host a multiple number of systems. Cloud computing (Rittinghouse, & Ransome, 2016). Refers to the computing of a process or software, which helps to gain access over various computer related resources like computer network, storage, various servers, applications and various services. It is done with the help of internet. Cloud computing helps in storing of various data and also helps in their processing of this data by various users and organizations. Cloud computing also considers the security of the users (Almorsy, Grundy & Müller, 2016). This report is going to discuss about how the company is going to benefit from the use of cloud computing.
Webb’s decision of closing their Auckland data center rather than updating or replacing the old infrastructure has made them think of moving the data and service to the cloud. IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) is one of the four models for delivering cloud services. IaaS is the process in which the hardware, network and storage services are delivered to the cloud by virtual computing. IaaS resources can be rented (Chen, Li & Ruiz, 2017) as needed by companies rather than buying and installing the resources required. The increasing cost of the LTO 6 tapes used for backing up of data can be easily avoided by the use of IaaS.
Working in IaaS is comfortable and familiar as it is similar to working in data centers. Securities issues in IaaS can vary according to the use of public clouds (Heydari, Tavakoli & Riazi, 2014) or private clouds. Virtual machines (VMs) and services running on VMs can be controlled with IaaS in the public cloud. Security issues related to IaaS in public cloud are:
Protection of data and Monitoring of the usage: Data present IaaS infrastructure is both private and public therefore monitoring is essential. This monitoring becomes very much essential when IaaS is deployed in public cloud. It is very important to know who has accessed the information, how was the information accessed and from where the information is accessed and what happens to the accessed information. The problems are easily solved by applying proper modern Rights Management services, which restricts the critical data of the business (Latif et al., 2014). Creation and deploying of policies for information is essential for protection of the data.
Risks Related to IaaS Infrastructure, the Database and Communication Between Webb’s and IaaS Database
End-to-End Logging and Reporting: Demanding of comprehensive logging and reporting in place by effective deployment of IaaS. Robust logging and reporting solution helps in keeping track of who has accessed information, from where the information has been accessed, which machines are handling the information and the storage arrays (Chen & Zhao, 2012). This information’s are very important for service management and optimization.
Authentic and authorized access: Effective Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solution can be obtained by robust authentication and authorization. Use of two or multiple authentication technique is required for the most secure authentication mechanism (Chen & Zhao, 2012).
Hardening of the infrastructure: Hardening and cleaning of “Golden image” VM and VM templates needs to be done on a regular basis. This can be done while the images are being created.
Encryption from end to end: All the data including the data on the disk can be encrypted by the use of whole disk encryption this leads to prevention of offline attacks. Besides encryption of disk, the communications that host’s OS and VM’s are also encrypted.
Cloud security refers to the processes involved in the protection of the data stored in the clouds (Hashizume et al., 2013). The security issues related to IaaS infrastructure are as follows:
Leakage of data: As large amount of data is stored in cloud it becomes a target for attackers. Data leak can lead to a chain of unfortunate events for the company IaaS providers (Khalil, Khreishah & Azeem, 2014).
Bypass of authentication: Insufficient attention to authentic verification, leads to leakage of data (Hashizume et al., 2013). Weak passwords along with problems in management of encryption and certificates are the main reasons for this problem.
API hacking and Interface: Cloud services and applications cannot be imagined without friendly user interface (UIs) and application program interface (API) (Bhadauria & Sanyal, 2012). Reliable mechanism of data access control and encryption are responsible for the security and availability of cloud services.
Cyber-attacks: Cyber-attacks are very much common nowadays. An experienced attacker is not easily detectable when an infrastructure is under attack (Pearson, 2013). Remote network attack also has a great impact on the infrastructure.
Permanent loss of data: Data loss may occur due to accident or malicious acts. Data loss is no less than a data leak. Addition to this it is necessary to take care of storage used for encryption keys moving of encrypted data to the cloud (Chen & Zhao, 2012).
Risks Associated with Backing up of Data, Retrieval of Data and Storing of Data in the cloud
Windows used for backing up of data are too large: Speed of moving of data (during onsite backup) from the servers to the backup system is similar to LAN speed. During backup process the internet speed play a very vital role (Lu et al., 2015). Due to dependency on the internet connection the backups faces congestion and the uploading process becomes slow. Monitoring of bandwidths and looking for services that can support continuous backups helps to avoid congestion and the issues caused due to bandwidth constraints.
The restore windows used for restoring of data are too small: during a time of disaster, a company needs to get their service up and running as fast as they can (Sharma et al., 2017). Likewise, the dependency of creating the backup on internet speed the restoring of data is also slow. Comparatively the speed of restoring of data from a tape is much faster than restoring data from the cloud. Evaluating the time required and the objectives and the Service Level Agreements can help in solving the problem (Hirano & Ogawa, 2016). The company must make an estimate of the time required for restoration of the backup data. In tapes, a company can keep backups of data on a monthly, weekly, quarterly and annual basis. Backup from tapes is time saving as well as restoration can be done from any point in time. Whereas in cloud backup process there is continuous replication of data and changes overwrites the previous file. This is advantageous as it saves time and bandwidth but it is also disadvantageous during the need of an older version of the files. Consulting with the service provider if they keep an older version of files helps in solving the problem.
Many companies suffer a risk of security breach. When a company stores data and backups in the cloud it means they are totally depending on the service provider’s security. Backing up of data in an encrypted format makes the data unusable to anyone else even if the service provider experiences a breech (Latif et al., (2014). Along with this storing of the keys used for encryption in some other place of the cloud rather than the place where the backup of the data is stored. Losing of the keys, make the data inaccessible.
Backup recovery, business continuity and disaster recovery are some of the issues for which protection is required. Backup is the easiest way for Webb’s to protect their data from many issues. A backup is nothing but a copy of the data that the company is storing in the clouds (Lu et al., 2015). Disaster recovery is something which the company can use to recover the entire relevant IT infrastructure at a remote site after a primary becomes unavailable for an unacceptable period of time (Sharma et al., 2017). Besides data recovery, recovery of server and applications along with any network capabilities (Pearson, 2013). The company should read the user license agreement very carefully. Before uploading any data, the company should encrypt the data properly.
Conclusion:
The reports conclude that the company Webb’s can use the IaaS for backing up their data. Besides the security, solving of issues related to cloud computing is avoided by taking up certain security measures and consciousness of the company. Webb’s can back up their data from Auckland data center before restoring the data in some other data center; they must talk to the service provider regarding the issues that they might face. IaaS not only helps Webb in lowering their cost of shifting the data but also helps in saving the time and makes the process much easier. They can easily access their data and protect them by using certain encryption key, which makes the data present in the cloud accessible only to the company.
References:
Almorsy, M., Grundy, J., & Müller, I. (2016). An analysis of the cloud computing security problem. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.01107.
Bhadauria, R., & Sanyal, S. (2012). Survey on security issues in cloud computing and associated mitigation techniques. arXiv preprint arXiv:1204.0764.
Chen, D., & Zhao, H. (2012, March). Data security and privacy protection issues in cloud computing. In Computer Science and Electronics Engineering (ICCSEE), 2012 International Conference on (Vol. 1, pp. 647-651). IEEE.
Chen, L., Li, X., & Ruiz, R. (2017). Resource renting for periodical cloud workflow applications. IEEE Transactions on Services Computing.
Hashizume, K., Rosado, D. G., Fernández-Medina, E., & Fernandez, E. B. (2013). An analysis of security issues for cloud computing. Journal of Internet Services and Applications, 4(1),
Heydari, A., Tavakoli, M. A., & Riazi, M. (2014). An Overview of Public Cloud Security Issues. International Journal of Management Excellence, 3(2), 440-445.
Hirano, M., & Ogawa, H. (2016, August). A Log-Structured Block Preservation and Restoration System for Proactive Forensic Data Collection in the Cloud. In Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES), 2016 11th International Conference on (pp. 355-364). IEEE.
Khalil, I. M., Khreishah, A., & Azeem, M. (2014). Cloud computing security: a survey. Computers, 3(1), 1-35.
Latif, R., Abbas, H., Assar, S., & Ali, Q. (2014). Cloud computing risk assessment: a systematic literature review. In Future Information Technology(pp. 285-295). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Lu, P., Zhang, L., Liu, X., Yao, J., & Zhu, Z. (2015). Highly efficient data migration and backup for big data applications in elastic optical inter-data-center networks. IEEE Network, 29(5), 36-42.
Pearson, S. (2013). Privacy, security and trust in cloud computing. In Privacy and Security for Cloud Computing (pp. 3-42). Springer London.
Rittinghouse, J. W., & Ransome, J. F. (2016). Cloud computing: implementation, management, and security. CRC press.
Sharma, P., Lee, S., Guo, T., Irwin, D., & Shenoy, P. (2017). Managing Risk in a Derivative IaaS
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