Public Cloud Security Issues

– Brought to you by the 2X Cloud Computing Team –

The obvious benefits offered by cloud computing technology have not only made it inevitable, but also irresistible for business to embrace this ever-innovating technology. While scalability and agility improve business productivity levels, optimization of resources decreases Capex and Opex. However, choosing the right cloud model for your business requirements is a tough task. Businesses have the option to choose a Public, Private or a Hybrid cloud.

With the public cloud offering a cost-effective model, small and medium businesses are turning to this option. However, price is not the only criteria to be concerned with; data integrity and security are also major areas for consideration. Below are certain security issues businesses should address when determining which cloud model is best for their business.

Multi-tenancy issues

A public cloud is offered at an affordable price because resources are shared …

More than two in five (45%) of respondents to a Spiceworks survey admit they are using cloud networking tools in their business, or are going to push forward with it within 12 months.

The survey results, of 500 IT professionals, were collected in a report entitled “The Cloudification of the Network”, produced in association with cloudy networking solutions provider Pertino.

Of course, the more cynical and world-weary CloudTech readers will have worked out the message in this survey given Spiceworks and Pertino both deal in cloud networking technology. Yet on the flip side, more than half of companies aren’t interested in cloud networking software until at least 2015.

Networking, however, has arguably been the most important topic of conversation at this year’s VMworld conference, according to VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger. This comes amidst the virtualisation experts launching NSX, its latest network virtualisation tool, moving forward from server virtualisation …

We all know that Big Data is only useful if it is tailored to individuals within companies. In the past, a lot has been made of real-time data delivery – the concept of delivering important information quickly when it’s most needed by the right people. Now a handful of new solutions deliver data that is not only timely, but also contextually insightful for sales & marketing.
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Howard Brown, Founder & CEO of RingDNA, will look at how and why context will play a critical role in the future of sales & marketing.

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Virtustream on Tuesday announced that its cloud management software xStream™ can now be used to optimize VMware environments for mission-critical applications, enhance security and enable hybrid cloud environments.
«We continue to further enhance and optimize our cloud software offering,» said Simon Aspinall, chief vertical markets, strategy and marketing officer at Virtustream. «Virtustream xStream is the leading platform for supporting production applications, such as ERP, CRM, DB, SCM and BI, in multi-tenant public clouds, and is key to maximizing the potential of the software-defined data center (SDDC).»
Virtustream reports that the xStream cloud management software, with its dynamic µVM (micro-VM) abstraction layer, reduces overhead expenditures by up to 40 percent and overall costs (hardware, licensing) by 25-30 percent; the solution also provides service level isolation beyond standard VMware virtualization.

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A new report suggests that most users neglect to protect their mobile devices with security software.
The use of personal mobile devices for work purposes means security providers have an opportunity to assist enterprise bring-your-own-device (BYOD) initiatives, as a report from IT research firm Gartner suggested consumer adoption and willingness to pay for antivirus software on mobile devices is low, according to an article on eWEEK.com.
The report predicts that 30 percent of consumer product selection criteria will be based on requirements to secure new mobile computing platforms by 2015.
While the average IT-savvy consumer has five or more devices at home that connect to the Internet, consumers are far more likely to have an antivirus program installed on their laptops and desktops while tablets, mobile phones and gaming systems that connect to the Internet are often left unprotected.

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Racemi has completed validation of VMware vCloud Hybrid Service, enabling migration of heterogeneous workloads to vCloud Hybrid Service.
What is the easiest way for an enterprise to migrate to the vCloud Hybrid Service? Racemi makes that promise with its migration software that now supports vCloud Hybrid Service – an addition to other VMware platforms vSphere and vCloud. Racemi is the only VMware certified partner to offer the ability to migrate existing physical, virtual (Xen, Hyper-V, VMware, KVM), and even other cloud servers into vCloud Hybrid Service.
«We worked closely with VMware to offer support for vCloud environments,» said James Strayer, vice president of product management, Racemi. «With Racemi server migration software, we can quickly and easily migrate workloads from any platform, such as physical servers, other virtual platforms, and even other cloud providers, into vCloud Hybrid Service.»
Racemi’s server imaging technology automatically migrates data between dissimilar physical, virtual or private cloud platforms, streamlining the onboarding process from days to minutes. By comparison, manually migrating workloads to a public cloud built on different infrastructure can take manual labor, significantly impacting migration costs.
And from the VMware side, Mathew Lodge, vice president – Cloud Services, said: «This is important as our customers move their workloads across different environments and deploy into hybrid cloud environments.»

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Is it true that all IT will move to the cloud, i.e., computing resources available from hyperscale data centers accessed via the Internet, due to the benefits of cost reduction, business agility, and the transformation of CapEx to OpEx? Or how about that the industry will consolidate to a few global players, that IT spend will go down as price wars drive computing costs ever lower, and that security and electricity consumption are key issues?
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Joe Weinman, Sr. VP of Cloud Services & Strategy at Telx, will correct popular myths, half-truths, and misconceptions regarding the future of the cloud.

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Let’s begin with a leading question: Can’t the hybrid economy model live within the public cloud? From the enormous number of conversations with top cloud thought leaders, CIOs, startups, and the like, it seems that the answer is YES. In this post, I will raise some basic questions and will delve deeply into this topic to debate the common resistance to what I call “pure cloud deployment.”
I started my journey in the technology world only 10 years ago. I started establishing an online cloud and SaaS solution for the SMB, and 6 years later I was exposed to the great wonderful world of enterprise IT factory. I experienced and documented the challenge of moving the multi-million dollar IT shop to AWS cloud. I also supported and kept records on projects of enterprises and ISVs that moved resources from their on-premise applications to the Amazon cloud, beginning with their initial integration and continual maintenance all the way to the education and implementation of the cloud pay-as-you-go and on-demand models. In my journey, I saw how Salesforce grows like crazy and how its ecosystem mushrooms along with it. I’ve closely followed Amazon’s every step of building the AWS cloud, which, without a doubt, has been a revolution from IT markets.

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Taking down a competitor’s website can be very valuable. Unlike Hacktivists, with generally short attention spans, or regular cybercriminals, who usually give up when faced with adequate protection, these well-funded attacks persist over time, and employ multiple, sophisticated vectors.
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Marc Gaffan, Co-Founder & VP of Business Development at Incapsula, will review a real case study defending against one of the largest, most sophisticated and persistent DDoS attacks. These include Networking Capacity, Client Classification, whitelisting / blacklisting / crowdsourcing, challenge mechanisms, anomaly detection and the secret sauce.

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VMware vCloud Hybrid Service is a secure, dedicated hybrid cloud service operated by VMware, built on the trusted foundation of VMware vSphere. The service supports existing workloads and third-party applications as well as new application development, giving IT a common platform for seamlessly extending its data center to the cloud. vCloud Hybrid Service is available in two service types – Dedicated Cloud and Virtual Private Cloud – and includes five primary service components.

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