Seven benefits of cloud computing

As cloud computing gradually becomes the trend of future development, many plausible ideas are becoming increasingly prominent, and security concerns are emerging. This article focuses on the seven potential benefits of cloud computing for security technology.

I. centralized data storage

Reduce Data leaks: This is the most talked about by cloud service providers. Before the emergence of cloud computing, data is often easily leaked, especially the theft of portable laptops, which has become one of the biggest factors for data leakage. An additional backup drive is required to prevent data leakage. With the continuous popularization of cloud technologies, data "Mines" will also be greatly reduced. The small and real-time data transmission on the handheld or Netbook is far less risky than the batch transmission on the laptop. You can ask the Certified Information Security Office (CISO) of any major company if all their laptops are equipped with the company-authorized Security technology, for example, Full Disk Encryption will tell you that this is not realistic. Although they have invested a lot of energy in asset management and data security, they still face a lot of dilemmas and difficulties, not to mention those small and medium enterprises? There are few enterprises that use data encryption or store important data separately.

Reliable Security Monitoring: centralized data storage makes security monitoring easier. If the data is stolen, the consequences are unimaginable. By storing data in one or more data centers, data center managers can manage data in a unified manner and be responsible for resource allocation, load balancing, software deployment, and security control, it also provides more reliable real-time security monitoring and reduces user costs.

Ii. Rapid Event Response

Forensic preparation: When necessary, I can use the conditions provided by the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) supplier, create a dedicated forensic server for your company. When an event requires evidence collection, I only need to pay for the cost of online storage. Without the need for additional configuration personnel to manage remote login and software, all I need to do is to click some buttons on the cloud provider Web interface. If multiple incident responses are generated, I can first copy them and distribute the forensic work to different departments or personnel for quick analysis and conclusion. However, to make full use of this function, forensic software vendors need to transform from traditional software licensing to new network licensing models.

Shorten the forensics time: if a server fails in the cloud, I just need to click the cloud client to clone the server and make the cloned server disk open to the forensics server. I don't need to find a storage device temporarily, and spend time waiting for it to start and enter the use status, thus greatly shortening the forensics time.

Reduce the probability of server errors: similar to the situation described earlier, even if a server fails, you can quickly clone and have a new server for use in a very short time. In addition, in some cases, the replacement of faulty hardware does not affect the normal process of forensics.

Forensics is more targeted: In the same cloud, the speed of cloning servers will be much faster-clone servers can be faster distributed to the file system specially designed by cloud providers. From the network traffic perspective, server copies in the same cloud may not incur additional costs. If there is no cloud, it will take a lot of valuable time and expensive hardware costs to achieve the same purpose. In the cloud environment, I only need to pay for storage fees for useful forensics.

Hide forensic traces: some cloud storage can perform encryption, validation, and hash ). For example, Amazon S3 automatically generates an MD5 hash when you store data ). Theoretically, you do not need to waste time using external tools to generate MD5 encryption verification, because the cloud already has these functions.

Shorten the time to access protected data: the CPU performance is now very powerful. It takes a long time to verify the password used to protect data. However, when a powerful CPU is configured in the cloud environment, you can check the password performance of data protection in a short time and a wider range. As a result, the batch processing of protected data access will become simple and fast.

Iii. Password Reliability Test

Reduce password cracking time: if your company needs to use a password cracking tool to regularly test the password strength, you can use cloud computing to reduce the password cracking time and ensure the reliability of the password strength, you only need to pay the relevant fees.

Dedicated password cracking machine: If you use distributed password cracking to test the password strength, the workload will be affected by many related machines, thus affecting the use efficiency. In the cloud environment, you can set up a dedicated machine for password cracking, which can not only provide work efficiency, but also reduce sensitive data leakage and overload.

Iv. Logs

Fees are charged based on the number of records for an indefinite period: logs are often post-event. If the disk space is insufficient, you can re-allocate the logs without affecting the storage and usage of logs. Cloud storage allows you to record the standard logs you want as you like without date restrictions. All you need is pay by usage.

Improve the log indexing mechanism: In cloud computing, You can implement real-time Indexing Based on your logs and enjoy the benefits of instant search. If necessary, you can also detect the computer's dynamic information based on the log records to easily implement real-time monitoring.

Compliant with extended log records: most operating systems now support extended log records in the C2 audit trail mode, which ensures that the system can protect resources and have sufficient audit capabilities, c2 mode also allows us to monitor all access attempts to all databases. Now, we are more likely to achieve this goal in the cloud environment, and Granular logging will also make forensic investigation easier.

5. Improve the Performance of Security Software

Demand is the driving force behind the move forward: the pace of upgrading the CPU is getting faster and faster. If the processor performance becomes the bottleneck of machine operation, users will inevitably look at the more expensive CPU. In the same situation, security product vendors also understand this truth. I believe that there will be more and more high-performance security software in cloud computing, and to some extent, cloud brings the overall improvement of security products.

Vi. Reliable Construction

Pre-control mechanism: cloud computing-based virtualization can achieve more benefits. You can customize the "secure" or "reliable" status, and create your own VM image without being cloned. However, it should be noted that this may require the cooperation of third-party tools.

Reduce vulnerabilities: Install patches offline to greatly reduce system vulnerabilities. Images can be synchronized in real time in a secure state, and patches can be easily installed even when offline VMS are disconnected.

It is easier to detect the security situation: This is a very important aspect. With a copy of your work environment, you can perform security detection at a lower cost and less time. This can be said that a significant step forward in the security work environment.

VII. Security Testing

Reduce security testing costs: SaaS providers only cover part of their security testing costs. By sharing the same application service, you can save a lot of expensive security testing costs. Even through the software as a Service (PaaS ), it also allows your software developers to write program code at a potentially cost-effective scale (especially program code that uses scanning tools to scan security vulnerabilities ).

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