The Cloud Security Alliance has taken the initiative to unify cloud service providers to allow for the creation of a peer based information sharing center. This sharing center will be co-chaired by Brian Kelly, CSO at cloud firm Rackspace and the founder and CEO of anonymous cyber incident sharing platform TruStar, Dave Cullinane.

Kelly has said,”The whole concept emerged from what we refer to as Presidential Decision Directive 63, which we started back in May of 1998. Under the Clinton administration they convened a group of people to look at the initiatives needed for the protection of the nation’s critical infrastructure. It had a number of directives, one of which being the formation of a range of information sharing and analysis centers, and a few of them formed immediately — financial services, information technology and telecommunications.”

In addition, Kelly has said that in 15 years these centers have been operable, they have been to learn and improve this new independent information sharing center. “I think, largely, they were ineffective for the initial 5-10 years as participants weren’t really providing anything and they were just there to consume information, and it was not really timely enough, nor was it actionable. From a security perspective, we need to represent a unified front. We have to work as one team. I need to be able to call my buddy at Amazon on a moment’s notice, and Google needs to be able to call me to tell me what they’ve found.”

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Imperva Inc., dedicated to protecting business-critical data and applications in the cloud and on-premises, and Raytheon|Websense a global leader in protecting organizations from the latest cyber-attacks and data theft, have formed a strategic alliance to facilitate both safe and productive use of cloud applications for organizations of a myriad of sizes. This agreement allows Raytheon|Websense to implant the Imperva Skyfence Cloud App Catalog into its web security gateway products. In addition, it certifies joint interoperability that will make it easier for customers to both deploy and integrate the solutions.

Mike Siegel, Vice President of Product Management of Raytheon|Websense, has commented “As a cloud access security broker (CASB), Skyfence will strengthen our Triton platform by providing powerful, embedded risk intelligence to support reporting and decision-making. The Skyfence technology allows our current and future customers to leverage the existing Websense platform and better deal with cloud app adoption and security issues emerging from shadow IT.”

It is essential that cloud computing organizations create or adopt a solution that can both periodically scan activity and mark new additions to the program. Skyfence can routinely monitor the environment of the cloud and will alert IT management to changes.

Mark Kraynak, Chief Product Officer of Imperva, has stated, ““IT cannot begin to define and enforce a cloud security strategy if they are unaware of the applications in use. With a myriad of cloud applications being adopted for workforce efficiency including file-sharing and collaboration, measuring what applications are being used and understanding their risk to the business are critical.”

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The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has released three documents pertaining to cloud security. These documents hope to aid the Defense Department in securing the network against attacks. According to a report in C4ISR & Networks, the documents will include two new requirement guides and a new concept of operations. The goal of these documents is to prevent the disruption of cloud service provider-supported DoD missions. In addition, they will aid in creating a perimeter defense and monitoring architecture for applications hosted in commercial cloud environments.

The cloud access point (CAP) functional requirements document (FRD) calls for a line of defense between e Department of Defense Information Network (DoDIN) and Internet-based public cloud service offers. According to the documents, the first DISA-established CAP is a modified NIPRNet federated gateway.

Jack Wilmer, DISA infrastructure development executive, has told C4ISR & Networks, “A CAP being fully scalable and able to support the enterprise, to include the availability of the application protection enterprise-wide, is scheduled to be ready by early 2016.”

The documents also state, “As DoD strives to meet the objectives of the DoD CIO to maximize the use of cloud computing, the DoDIN perimeter must continue to be protected against cyber threats from external connections. The CAP will proactively and reactively prevent attacks against the DoDIN infrastructure, particularly traffic from mission applications that originates in the cloud service environment…there are many information assurance functions that may be implemented as detect and prevent measures to address the different types of external attacks”

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