CSA Defines Software Defined Perimeter to Secure Cloud Against Hackers

Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within cloud computing, is led by a broad coalition of industry professionals, companies, associations and other key stakeholders. Its mission is to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within cloud computing, and provide education on the uses of cloud computing to help secure all other forms of computing.

The next thing CSA has done is to announce a new project called Software Defined Perimeter (SDP) Initiative to develop an architecture that can be created with safe and trust entities between with certain end-to-end networks IP addresses, allowing you to create systems that are extremely resistant to network attacks.

The machine to machine (M2M) communication and Internet of Things (IoT) is growing by connecting all kinds of smart devices and increasing the risk for each of these endpoints. The IoT begins to reveal its true potential as intelligent devices connected to the internet are expected to reach 15 billion units by 2015, tripled from 2 billion in 2010. In addition, bring your own device (BYOD) and cloud computing infrastructure are now accepted by employees as primary devices of choice.

According to the CSA, the SDP leverages known security concepts such as federation, Secure Assertion Markup Language (SAML), Transport Layer Security (TLS). The framework recommends security controls to reduce as far as possible based on attacks against applications and network endpoint accessible from internet. The key is annular connectivity between devices and between users until they are authenticated and authorized. So that the SDP initiative could reduce security risks and reinforce company policies in a combination of technologies corporate, public or user information.

CSA says it is critical to the future of cloud technology that it is demonstrably more secure than legacy IT systems. SDP is an important component to allow both cloud providers and customers to secure applications all the way from the back end to the consumer device.

CSA is making this royalty-free research publicly available in order to catalyze the development of more secure clouds and BYOD deployments. Some of the largest brands and companies have agreed to participate in this initiative, and will be disclosed in the course of this initiative.

The non-profit organization recently published a guide for mobile computing and current threats to protect them. CSA has updated its Cloud Control Matrix (CCM) with recommendations of best practices for securing the cloud. The CCM Version 3.0 document, “Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing version 3.0” addresses information security risks over the access of, transfer to, and securing of cloud data in the mobile security; supply chain management, transparency and accountability; interoperability and portability; encryption and key management domain.

CSA plans to present an implementation case study at the RSA Conference in February next year, which are now open for participation, collaboration and peer review. The case study will comprises Software Defined Perimeter Whitepaper, Software Defined Perimeter “Deep Dive”, Software Defined Perimeter “Enterprise Implementation”, Software Defined Perimeter “Hacker Contest”, and Software Defined Perimeter “Developer’s Workshop”.

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