Five-step method to reduce the risk of PaaS-based SaaS application development

Five-step method to reduce the risk of PaaS-based SaaS application development
For cloud computing architects and developers who want to quickly deploy, monitor, and expand network applications on demand, AWS Elastic Beanstalk (test version) is a very useful tool. All they need to do is upload code and let Elastic Beanstalk automatically process deployment tasks-from capacity configuration, load balancing and automatic scaling to application running monitoring. At the same time, they can retain full control over AWS resources that control applications. They can even use the Elastic Beanstalk console at any time to access underlying resources. That is to say, there are certain risks and vulnerabilities in the development of network applications on the platform as a service (PaaS. Specific threat risks include hackers, software design defects, or poor testing methods. These risks may be exploited to affect the application or greatly reduce the performance of the application. By reducing the risk of SaaS application development on PaaS, cloud computing architects and developers will have a deeper understanding of the significant threats to their applications. Then, you only need to simply implement cost-effective safeguard measures. These profound understandings will help achieve a high return on investment. By reducing the frequency of exploits, they also help reduce the cost of disaster recovery. The following are the five steps to reduce your risk: • asset identification • Vulnerability and threat identification • Risk Assessment • Application-related safeguard measures to fix vulnerabilities • Implementation of risk mitigation policy step 1 asset identification first identified and software as a service (SaaS) on PaaS) application Development-related assets, and then assign a value to each asset. Determine the category of all assets. Here are some examples: Users: Both SaaS developers and SaaS users belong to this category. The value of each user group should be based on the average worker hours used for development and test applications. Resources: resources used by PaaS developers to run and store SaaS applications. For example, Elastic Beanstalk uses functions such as Amazon Elastic cloud computing (EC2), Amazon simple storage service, Amazon simple notification service, Amazon CloudWatch, Elastic load balancing, and automatic scaling. The value should be based on the amount of expenditure that is used by these resources. Elastic Beanstalk is free of charge. Security: this means encryption mechanisms, firewalls, and industry security standards, including SecaaS (security as a service ). The value is based on the working hours used for implementing security measures. Documentation: training manuals, management guidelines, security standards, physical standards, contingency plans, disaster recovery plans, and SLA are just a few examples in this document. The value is based on the media types required for document publishing, such as print, online, or digital media (CD. Software: Operating System, vulnerability testing tools, office tools (documents, workbooks, presentations), log analysis tools, and programming languages (Java ,. NET, PHP scripting language, Node. js programming languages, Python, and Ruby should all be considered as software. The value should be based on the software procurement price or the amount of money that is used to develop SaaS applications on PaaS. Step 2: the vulnerability and threat identification are not the only sources of threats that will exploit the PaaS vulnerability. The following are other examples of threat sources: • software design defects may cause malicious SQL injection. • Incorrect access control configurations may result in the theft of sensitive storage data being processed by the application. • Incorrect firewall configurations may cause unexpected PaaS disabling. • Data Recovery vulnerabilities due to cloud computing resource pools and elasticity. This means that resources allocated to one user may be accidentally reproduced to another user. In this way, data cannot always be restored for the previous user. Step 3: Risk assessment users want to ensure that PaaS will continue to maintain availability while meeting their demand for more traffic resources. The evaluation of the non-availability risk is a quantitative method. Some examples include: • PaaS in a year due to infrastructure as a service (IaaS) estimated frequency of disabling and becoming unavailable • estimated frequency of PaaS attacks due to incorrect firewall configuration • unable to meet the estimated frequency of SLA commitment performance • network router supporting PaaS running IaaS and the estimated frequency of failure of the switch. Step 4: apply relevant safeguard measures to fix vulnerabilities and implement cost-effectiveness safeguard measures are a way to reduce the risk of SaaS application development on PaaS. The following are some examples: • applications have been correctly designed without Software defects. PaaS developers and cloud computing architects have enough skills and experience to develop well-designed applications on PaaS. • The user has set the access control configuration correctly based on their different roles and/or data sensitivity. The logging option has been activated. • The firewall settings have been correctly set. The intrusion detection system and Load balancer are in place. A PaaS Fault Mechanism policy has been enhanced. The input and output traffic data of PaaS has been encrypted. Step 5: Implement risk mitigation policy asset identification, vulnerability and threat identification, risk assessment, and application-related safeguard measures. The specific implementation process of vulnerability fixing varies with the actual situation of the specific organization. Risk mitigation policies should be implemented to standardize the entire process and reduce relevant costs. This policy should include AWS resources, programming languages, and servers used for development, operation, and storage of applications on PaaS (in the case described above, Elastic Beanstalk ), in addition, this strategy needs to be reviewed and updated periodically due to major technological changes, user needs changes, and organizational needs changes. In short, having a good team following these five steps can reduce the risk of SaaS software development on PaaS. A high-level PaaS development team will help you plan ahead and determine what should be included in the cost-benefit risk mitigation process.