Specialization in the surgery industry--security reflection in the era of cloud computing

Recently, with the IT security industry, many people talk about the security of reflection. The enterprise deploys the security product in the final analysis is in order to realize the security product function, achieves protects the enterprise IT environment security the goal. In the PC era and the Internet age, users are surrounded by a variety of security devices, firewalls, data leakage prevention programs, anti-virus software, security gateways ....

However, despite the deployment of so many security devices, today we still see a lot of security incidents: Sony PSN by Black, RSA authentication technology data stolen, Citibank user data Leakage ... (Related topics: 2011 First half of the hacker attacks memorabilia) What is more frightening is that the disclosure of security incidents is only the tip of the iceberg, and a large number of security incidents have not been reported.

Security challenges faced by enterprises

Green Alliance Technology President Wu Yunkun in early November this year, the Cloud Security Alliance Summit Forum introduced the current security operational dimensions of some of the current situation, for the understanding of the security problems faced by enterprises is very enlightening. He presented the following three key words:

Effectiveness: Enterprises (users) deploy a lot of security equipment, but these security equipment in the enterprise operating environment to play a role in how many, how effective? In fact, companies often face the problem of deploying a lot of security products or technologies, but not after a while. Because they have too much information to protect, and these security products and technologies emit such or such a security warning, and these warnings have no way to establish a correlation with the actual security risk, over time is ignored. So these security products or technologies do not bring their capabilities to play.

7*24 Hours: The main business of the enterprise is not security, will not be equipped with a large number of professional security personnel responsible for enterprise security operations. However, the safety problem is all the times, how can the enterprise guarantee the safety precaution of 7*24 hour?

Business security experts: The security of the current enterprise operation and maintenance work presents a pyramid characteristics (pictured below). The bottom of the pyramid includes management identity authentication, patching, vulnerability scanning and evaluation, security configuration verification, and response to security incidents, but because of the lack of skills, tools and resources, enterprises are busy with all kinds of emergency processing and even need to deal with customer complaints. The middle tier of the pyramid includes firewall/ids policy checking and tuning, security status assessment, security and project management, and configuration change management process integration. The top of the pyramid is closely related to the business, and more is to ensure that the security policy and business should be in operation and maintenance management. The bottom of the pyramid is the largest workload, but the most valuable is often the work at the top of the pyramid. However, most of the company's energy spent at the bottom of the pyramid, for the basic operations, busy patching, repair loopholes, to deal with security incidents, but no energy planning security and business and strategy.

The pyramid model of enterprise IT operation Dimension

In addition, mobile, cloud computing These technical trends also make our system more and more complex, business more and more complex, business innovation also directly affect the development of it as a business support, so the security problems faced by more and more.

The first time, the enterprise user buys the security equipment to be able to produce the effect, but later we discovered that many effects are not so obvious.

Return to the nature of security--security in the age of cloud computing

Return to the essence, we find that the enterprise needs only security itself, not equipment, not services or other; we also found that the main function of the enterprise IT department is to provide technical support and security for the business, so security personnel need to know both security and business.

So why not outsource security? Put a lot of security complexity into the outsourcing business, and the enterprise IT security managers more to understand the business, according to the business Development of security management strategy. Specializing in the operation of the industry, professional security team can more quickly and efficiently solve security problems.

The advent of cloud computing provides strong support for this kind of secure outsourcing. The Safety Treasure Project which invests by the innovation Workshop is uses the cloud computing technology to provide the security service for (the personal or the enterprise) website, once the user chooses this security service, then can the zero deployment and 0 safeguard to realize own security demand, such pattern can solve the enterprise above the confusion very well. (Related report: Security Bao: Subscribe to achieve Web site Protection Cloud security services)

Enterprises can put some professional security issues to the specialized security companies to do, such as to the professional company to the security equipment for real-time monitoring, detection and alarm abnormal security incidents, monitoring and analysis of security equipment logs, generate alarms and periodic analysis reports, remote or local security incident handling, and so on. Professional security companies will help businesses manage security and identify and dispose of network security anomalies. This will greatly reduce equipment procurement and maintenance costs, improve security operations, improve utilization, and professional security expert team can achieve 7*24 hours of remote on-duty service, enhance the overall security capabilities.

But the enterprise does some more important work, is pays attention to the enterprise core business domain, shifts the energy from the bottom of the operation work to the pyramid top level movement and the management strategy formulation above.

The significance of cloud computing to us is not only a technological innovation, but also a change in it mode, which will bring development impetus and greater value to the whole IT industry. Now, this new IT paradigm is evolving from concept to practice.