Brighter skies for the nebulous cloud

By Rick Basile

If I ask my five year-old son what a cloud is, he can easily answer. He points up to the sky at the big mass of white fluff that is hanging out over our heads. He knows the different types of clouds and can tell a storm cloud from a sunny day cloud.

When I ask people in network security what a cloud is, there's generally a hesitation, which is followed by "What exactly do you mean by cloud?" It is then followed up with a myriad of different responses. Folks know the term cloud, but aren't sure exactly what it is or why it's important to enterprises. Simply put, cloud computing means different things to different people and as such, it's explained in different ways.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines cloud computing as "a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction..."

Historically seen as a mid-size company option, cloud computing is quickly picking up traction in the enterprise. The push for enterprises to reduce CapEx and OpEx has been a driver in the adoption of cloud-based services and not only are enterprises able to reduce costs, but they also increase efficiencies and scalability without having to have multiple dedicated network people on hand. They can also deploy new sites in an extremely short amount of time compared to the legacy way of having to do a truck roll to get a new location set up.

With cloud-based service, some enterprises believe that it creates the potential sharing of proprietary information, enables employees to carry out business without any corporate awareness and can create security risks. In addition, with the increase in the amount a companies relying on cloud-based services, hackers see virtualized networks as a goldmine to exploit. As a result of this, there is the critical need to provide security around those networks. One way to solve this is to use a hybrid approach in which you have an internal private cloud while also using an external public-based cloud solution. The advantage of this approach is that an enterprise can deploy a hybrid solution which consists of both a private cloud for highly critical corporate information as well as use a public cloud for less sensitive information. With a private cloud, companies are able to fully segregate different departments or divisions within the organization.

It's also important for enterprises to look at a layered approach to network security so that they can offer the most complete network protections against multifaceted attacks. By having a complete threat management approach to securing the cloud, enterprises can have safety from multiple types of attacks while also being able to have additional levels of security, including data loss prevention, application control, vulnerability management and rogue detection. By using a layered defense approach that can leverage virtualization, an enterprise has its own security within the cloud and it can then be assured its data is protected from attack.

With that, it's important to add that securing just the inside of the cloud isn't enough and likewise, you can't just secure the outside. If you're going to be fully protected, you need to make sure that all of your bases are covered - both interior and perimeter.

Important to evaluate when considering cloud computing protection is the ability to provide real time research for current and evolving threats for immediate security updates. This will help reduce the chances of your network (whether private or hybrid) being exploited by a malicious attack.

Fortinet continues to be a leader in offering enterprises both hardware-based and software-based network solutions for the cloud. Find out more by visiting

www.fortinet.com/solutions/cloud.html

BIO

Rick Basile is Vice President of Financial Services at Fortinet and has more than 20 years of industrial and information security experience and extensive networking and telecommunications expertise. Rick was previously in the networking and security integration space with SBC Data Communications and later joined CoSine Communications before joining Fortinet in 2003.