Cloud security vision: to benefit more users

"The rain that comes directly from the clouds is distilled water, and it is as safe as a tap that can be drunk," he said. Can you say the same thing about the data from the clouds? "How do you react when a water company sells as dirty as a typical spam message and a malware deluge of internet traffic?" said Dr Zhang Hongwen, the CEO of Czech network. This has become a key issue in the long-term survival of the internet!

Water is the element of life: nearly 60% of our weight is made up of water. The existence of water is the first thing astronomers look for when they consider habitable planets. To find a good clean water source, people can live bangshui and thrive. The ancient trade routes were from one source to another, and modern cities have grown up with precious water assets.

In cyberspace, the flow of information to each node is like the water that people rely on to survive. They apply the same rule, that is, to provide good information, the business will flourish. For a service provider, the information it provides comes from the cloud, just as water eventually comes from the cloud. However, can the information in the cloud be as clean as the water in the cloud? If a service provider can promise to provide its customers with more than just data, filtered pure data, how will it be rewarded?

What does the service provider care about?

Customer churn is one of the biggest headaches for service providers. Global Mobile telecoms services have a yearly turnover rate ranging from 20% to 40%, and things will get worse as the market matures. As a common sense, we know that the cost of getting a new customer is much higher than the cost of retaining the existing customer, not only because the new customer has reduced the overall profit, but also because of the loss of the existing customer's recommendation, and reduce the opportunity to acquire new customers.

So please consider my question: "How would you react if your water supply was contaminated like a typical internet connection?" You will be forced to spend your money on your own water filtration system or water disinfectant tablet, or buy bottled water from other suppliers. and have to constantly find a better way to buy water.

That's exactly the same thing that Internet users do today: when they invest their money in third-party anti-virus and security systems, the investment they can spend on buying your services will be reduced. When a flood of spam messages rush into their mailboxes every day, they will be forced to look for better, or at least cheaper, service providers.

This is the engine of customer churn. In the case of spam, unwanted spam can create persistent pressure on users. Spammers carefully design every psychological strategy to attract your attention and distract you, and you have to browse through all the inboxes to avoid missing out on a few important emails. According to the Microsoft Security Report, the total amount of spam in 2010 broke through the 200 billion mark, and more than 97% of all emails sent over the network were unnecessary. When you have to spend time and money on Third-party internet protection software and hear another email service provider having better service and cleaner mailboxes, wouldn't you consider getting a new email account from there? For customers, changing mailboxes is just as easy as scratching, and for suppliers, means the loss of a customer.

Now let's change the scene: You have a provider that delivers good services last year, lowers the amount of spam you receive and provides malware protection, and does not require any extra effort to meet your needs. Are you going to trouble yourself to replace this supplier this year? This reveals a more common business scenario where selling services to existing customers is far easier than winning a new customer.

In fact, for service providers, 20% to 40% of the customer churn rate is pretty bad and frustrating. If by providing clean data to reduce the frustration and reduce the customer churn rate, it is believed that every service provider will be willing.

Bigger problem

So far, we've been thinking that any company that can find a way to provide pollution-free internet access will have the immediate advantage of cutting customer churn. No doubt this is good for them. But what about business, economic and social benefits?

The new approach has limited impact on large enterprises or public organizations that have invested heavily in security solutions. These groups have their own clear needs, from the military explosion-proof security, to the high-speed demand for financial transactions, and medical and government personal data protection and so on. They will have their own security systems in place and a professional team to manage.

The real beneficiaries of security provided by service providers will be individuals, home users, and smaller businesses. They don't want to be vulnerable, but they hate the time and resources they need to invest to protect themselves. This is a large sector of the population in terms of statistics, but are they as important as the larger enterprises in the economy?

In Europe, for example, the EU Web site defines SMEs as companies with fewer than 250 employees, and "small" refers to fewer than 50 employees, while "micro" refers to fewer than 10 employees. According to the EU website, these so-called small and medium-sized enterprises "provide two-thirds of the private sector job opportunities, and contribute more than half of the total output produced by the EU enterprises." In addition, SMEs are the real backbone of the European economy and the main source of wealth and economic growth, second only to their pivotal role in innovation and research and development.

Let's take a look at Canada again. According to Canadian data, "small" is less than 99 employees, "medium" is less than 500, and "big" is 500 or more employees: these "small enterprises accounted for 98.2% of the employer enterprise, medium-sized Enterprises accounted for 1.6% of the employer's enterprises and large enterprises accounted for 0.1% of the employers." ”

If these numbers are typically representative, and there are about 2.2 million employees around the world with fewer than 250 people, then a cleaner internet connection will be a huge economic benefit in any country. This is simply a direct time and cost saving for smaller businesses because they don't have the resources to protect themselves from malicious and time-consuming traffic.

Look at the benefits of home users. For them, the Internet is mainly about providing entertainment and social contact. A society in which people can interact, share experiences and discuss ideas freely is a very healthy society. But when the communication media is contaminated by fishing probes, spam contacts, "grooming" and other forms of malicious traffic, the media that once Unite society becomes an unusual tool for tearing it down and spreading mistrust and anger.

Let's take a concrete example: 7 billion of the world's total population already has more than 2.1 billion mobile internet users, and in the second quarter of 2013 the survey of the China Mobile Security Market Quarterly report showed that 53% of mobile data users did not want to install security software on their mobile devices. This may seem shocking news for security professionals, but it is a real reflection of the human need and the accompanying frustration that when home users feel compelled to take steps to ensure the security of their home IT systems, they are unwilling to adopt the existing approach. In fact, the attraction of most mobile internet access is its immediacy, simplicity and immediacy. Once things start to get complicated, the attraction goes with the wind as more passwords and security levels are introduced.

So this is a bigger picture: a society that provides clean Internet access without leaving the main security burden to individual users will not only reap the benefits of economic benefits but also benefit from better social cohesion and less discontent.

But is that possible?

Although the trend of cloud computing has only just begun, it has shown great potential for implementing Internet security and changing the rules of the game. Statistics, the global Internet security costs as much as $60 billion a year, but internet pollution to the world economy, but the damage to nearly 1 trillion U.S. dollars-it is clear that the clean Internet will make a tremendous contribution to the global economy and social welfare. But is it a daydream? How will it be put into reality?

The popularity of video brings about massive growth of online content. 90% of attacks are hidden in streaming media and text content, such as video. -Any effective solution must involve real-time object-level analysis of network traffic. This "depth content detection" Not only analyzes the bytes in the network packet, but also identifies and processes the digital objects transmitted through many network packets. Clearly, the ability to check at this level will be a catalyst for many new Web applications, and removing spam and malware is just the beginning.

We start with meeting the interests of service providers: providing clean Internet traffic to your customers and you will have a direct competitive advantage. Of course, I also suggest that all service providers should do so, so this competitive advantage will be short-lived. However, reducing customer churn will still be an important dividend.

But here's another factor: if a service provider has a way to clean up traffic, including attacking content, it has the potential to provide a range of security and other services. Clean Internet, like clean water, will benefit the whole community. There may be some customers with special needs, the service provider to provide "flavored water", according to the source region, language, start date or any number of special standards to develop security rules, for these requirements, in-depth content detection has unlimited potential to provide future services.

The need to implement this security philosophy must be an additional "security layer", as few service providers welcome the forklift-type upgrade of their huge infrastructure investments. It should be provided in software form and run in an embedded operating system that can be installed on common off-the-shelf hardware devices and servers or packaged as virtual machines.

Thankfully, such software has been available, and thousands of instances have been deployed to service providers, businesses, and small businesses around the world, performing high performance depth content testing for these organizations and managing their online behavior. At the same time, service providers now have an important opportunity to introduce such security services to enhance their operations and make a significant contribution to society.

Biggest problem

To know that a cleaner internet has a huge impact on business and society, it also raises important questions about the future of the internet itself.

As mentioned above, a very large network, due to its own complexity, adaptability and organic growth, thus has many characteristics similar to living organisms. However, a living organism is not only made up of meat and bones, it also has a system of covering the structure. The nervous system acts as a recognizable "control plane", receiving data from each part of the body, sending back signals to control and manage the organism in the form of sensory and pain.

Modern network trends recognize the need for a similar control plane to transform a static network into a dynamic "live" entity that adapts to rapidly evolving business and regulatory requirements. This is the essence of the Software definition Network (SDN), which is now widely recognized as the future of the Web.

All complex life has evolved such a nervous system, along with other systems running in parallel. Wikipedia points out: "The immune system is an organic system that resists the biological structure and processes of disease." To function properly, the immune system must detect a variety of agents, from viruses to parasitic worms, from the body's own health Organization. "This is a very clear description of the biological depth content check."

It continues to describe the immune system's "layered response", the innate immune system, to provide immediate, non-specific defenses for all plants and animals that move up the cell. Then there is the adaptive immunity that has been developed in vertebrates such as humans: "Here, the immune system adapts to its response during infection to improve its identification of pathogens." This improved response is preserved after the pathogen has been eliminated and retained in the form of immune memory, allowing the adaptive immune system to initiate faster, stronger attacks each time it encounters the pathogen. Because of the evolution and adaptation of pathogens, the immune system has evolved to develop multiple defense mechanisms.

The crux of the matter is that without some form of immune system, no organism can survive, just as it cannot move and adapt without the nervous systems. So, what is the long-term future of the web, unless we can develop a software-defined nervous system, and a software-defined security architecture built into the structure itself?

The security layer described here will provide an immune system for the organisms we call the Internet. The security defined by this software is an evolution as fundamental as Sdn.

It can prove vital to the Internet itself, as well as to society and the economy.