Cyber Security For Virtual And Cloud Environments

Cyber threats are one of the greatest risks faced by IT organizations today. While government organizations are increasingly involved in cyber security, individual IT organizations still have responsibility for protecting their own assets. Without action, IT organizations of all types risk becoming victims of expensive and damaging cyber attacks.

Networks serve as a key control point for cyber security, providing an access path for both inside and outside attacks. Yet networks are not easy to secure. They are complex, require careful configuration and are subject to human errors. They must also maintain a degree of openness while protecting against threats.

New technologies, virtualization and cloud computing introduce some new security concerns. For example, gaining access to the hypervisor in a multi-tenant environment would expose a number of virtual machines from different tenants at the same time.

Unfortunately, even with higher spending, there is no way to absolutely guarantee cyber security. In fact there is a hidden risk with extremely high levels of security. So many security measures can be applied that it can become difficult to keep an organization running smoothly. If no one can access systems, including legitimate users, the security solution is clearly not working correctly. Similarly, if security measures make performance unacceptable, security is again not achieving its objectives.

Cyber security cannot be addressed in isolation. It must consider other variables and test them together in order to ensure an optimal solution. This process is called PASS testing since it includes performance, availability, security and scalability testing. In order to validate cyber security—including PASS testing—a proper testing system must be selected and used.

The following criteria should be considered when choosing a security test solution for virtual and cloud computing environments:

• PASS testing
• Design independence
• Mixed traffic and encryption
• Physical and virtual support

- by Ankur Chadda