Microsoft Bets Cloud Computing Security Program

The information technology industry now faces a number of challenges as it offers many opportunities for cloud computing today. Based on Microsoft's previous 15-year experience, Microsoft believes that the online service delivery industry is facing the following challenges in terms of the securing Microsoft's Cloud Infrastructure document, which was published earlier in the paper, "Protecting Microsoft's Cloud technology Architecture":

The advent of the cloud business model makes the public and private entities more interdependent, including those serving those entities. These organizations and their customers will become more dependent on each other through the use of the cloud.

The acceleration of cloud services adoption, including continuous innovation in technology and business models, creates a dynamic hosting environment, which is a security challenge in itself. It is critical to keep up with the pace of growth and meet future expectations to run an efficient and secure project.

As business grows in cloud computing, attacks on online service delivery have become choppy. While some people are also attacking in a traditional way, more and more attacks focus on acquiring identity information, blocking access to sensitive business data, and stealing information.

As existing and new services are delivered globally, complex compatibility needs must be addressed. The difference between management, law and industry is also a challenge because every country in the world has its own laws that control the delivery and use of online environments.

What is Microsoft's solution for the security of these online services? Kummert, senior vice president of Microsoft's Business platform division, says this may be the answer from Microsoft's experience of running online services, and Microsoft began building and running online services from the 1994 MSN launch. and the Global Infrastructure services (Gfs,global Foundation services) are set up to manage the cloud infrastructure, and the Microsoft Online Services platform, including ensuring that hundreds of millions of of users around the world can use Microsoft's online products for 24 hours. On this cloud infrastructure runs Microsoft's more than 200 online services and web portals, including our day-to-day consumer-facing services Windows Live Hotmail and Live Search, and business-oriented services-Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite. Also mention Bill Gates's "Trustworthy Computing" program, which was launched at Microsoft in 2002. At that time, Microsoft realised that all these scenarios required "Trustworthy Computing", whether the consumer's personal information was stored on their own machines or online services, or if the company's key data was stored on its own server or on the Internet. As a company, given its influence and strength in the software sector, Microsoft has a unique advantage in providing users with a high security online experience. In Microsoft's view, it is through the following points to achieve its credible Raiyun vision:

Leverage risk-based information security mechanisms to assess and differentiate security and threats against the business;

Maintain and update a set of security control controls that can reduce risk;

Use the compatibility framework to ensure that the controls are properly designed and run efficiently.

And to put "trustworthy computing" into specific implementation tools or products, you need to mention Microsoft's cloud services worry system Windows Azure. For this product, Microsoft's mission is to provide Microsoft's cloud computing platform with the environment to develop, run, and manage services. To run applications and services on Windows Azure, developers can use the existing Visual Studio Tools, and Windows Azure supports many standards and web protocols, such as SOAP, REST, XML, and PHP. Since Microsoft released Windows Azure in 2008, by giving it more content, such as software Plus Services (s+s,software+services) and three-screen cloud (computer screens, mobile screens, TV screens and cloud computing), The Azure cloud computing platform has made great strides, including in-house consolidation and collaboration with other companies.

Last December, Microsoft announced the integration of the Windows Azure team into the servers and tools department, creating separate servers and cloud workgroups, and integrating infrastructure, development tools and cloud computing. In a recent communication with Prakash Sundaresan, general manager of Microsoft Asia Pacific Research Group Server and Development Tools Division (China), INFOQ editors have said that the Chinese team is now responsible for research and development including SQL Server, Visual Products, including studio, have focused on the cloud and are developing fully cloud-based services. Zhang, Microsoft's Asia-Pacific Research and Development chairman, said in an interview that Cloud computing, while providing users with great convenience, has also become an important issue for security. Microsoft's cloud computing platform uses multiple tiers to ensure user application and data security. The most important level in the operating system kernel, it adopted a new security model, so that the resources have both continuity and relative independence; In addition, the system has also been improved, the deployment of resources will not deploy the system's kernel resources, But through some instructions of the audit process to make judgments, there is the application layer, but also to do the corresponding protection measures, and even allow enterprises to take special confidential measures. And so on. These points show Microsoft's efforts to implement and secure its cloud computing platform tools.

According to other media reports, Microsoft in February this year to the U.S. federal government to provide a new cloud computing services--business Productivity Online Suite, the service includes more than the conventional cloud computing services higher security standards, such as background fingerprint verification and other biometric identification techniques. "Microsoft has made the fastest progress in cloud computing business, compared to other competitors," said Ron Markezich, vice president of Microsoft Network Services. We have the largest number of users, the brand is also the most well-known. Other vendors have failed to provide such a high level of security in the public domain. We provide a benchmark for security and privacy mechanisms. "Microsoft also joined a nonprofit group called Cloud Security Alliance to show its support for cloud security," Cloud said.

The more pervasive the cloud is, the more secure it should be, as confirmed by Microsoft's responsibility for computing business, George Stathakopoulos, who switched to Amazon in February this year. In the upcoming Hadoop cloud Computing conference and the second Cloud Computing conference, the security topic of cloud computing also accounted for a considerable proportion. We hope that in the future, when Microsoft can deploy Windows Azure to the mainland, it will be able to provide more secure and reliable cloud computing services for domestic enterprises and communities.