Defending the Cloud Against Blended Threats

55% of respondents to a recent NetIQ / Harris Interactive IT security survey cited that their inability to manage security in the cloud as the most difficult challenge. This was only beaten by a lack of time to monitor vast amounts of data (64%) and closely followed byan inability to manage security in virtualized environments (54%).

The survey of 200 IT security decision makers within enterprise organizations revealed the current effectiveness of data protection efforts. While more than one-half of IT budgets are allocated towards security, 70 percent of respondents have been impacted by security breaches and still struggle to mitigate attacks due to limited time and resources. The admitted lack in ability to manage security in virtualized and cloud environments is worrying; they were at least confident in their ability to successfully monitor and secure consumer devices, such as smart phones and tablets.

A new generation of attack vectors has emerged with the proliferation of cloud computing and intelligent workload management in physical, virtual and cloud worlds. Private, hybrid and public clouds have increased the complexity of security assurance across the enterprise, and there are severe side effects of data center walls’ disappearance and mobile device proliferation: “insiders” become the “outsiders”.

This weeks International Cloud Computing Conference and Expo is surrounded by news reports that suggest information protection systems remain vulnerable regardless of how much security technology has evolved. These include Adidas, who have taken their website content offline after suffering what it described as a "sophisticated, criminal cyber-attack" and reports that Charlie Miller is barred from Apple iTune store for developing a malicious app for iPhones and iPads to demonstrate Apple's app store is not immune to malware.

Our systems, whether physical, virtual or cloud based, are susceptible. I am looking forward debating these issues and how to take a layered approach to security to defend against cyber espionage and blended threats that tend to combine the worst of “outside in” and “inside out” attacks in my CloudExpo speaking slot: "Defending the Cloud Against Blended Threats" tomorrow.

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