Cloud security 101 was presented at OHM 2013, the 4-yearly conference dedicated to technology and its (mis)use.

1. Cloud Security 101
presented at OHM2013
“what would General Eisenhower say about PRISM”
Dr. Peter HJ van Eijk
@petersgriddle

2. Cloud Security: an oxymoron?
The knee-jerk reaction of a lot of people when they
first hear about cloud is:
– “The PATRIOT act/PRISM allows the US
government/YFTLA * to see everything that
(I do/everything my company does)
on the internet”
– “Therefore, the cloud is evil”
– “Besides: cloud computing is marketing hype.”
Is YFTLA ruining your internet?
Whose internet is it anyway?
*) Your favorite three letter agency

3. This talk’s roadmap
• Who am I? Who are you?
• Security and power in a historical context
• The Cloud: hype or reality?
• Basic cloud security concepts and methods
• Wrap up

4. Who am I?
• One of the world’s most experienced
independent cloud trainers.
• Developing and delivering cloud training such as
CCSK, Cloud Essentials and Cloud Governance
worldwide.
• Work history: University of Twente, AT&T Bell
Labs 07974, EDS, Eunet, Deloitte, independent
• See www.clubcloudcomputing.com for more
information and
https://ohm2013.org/wiki/User:Petersgriddle

5. Who are you at OHM2013?
• You are probably professionally involved in IT
or IT security
• You might work at or for corporate IT or with
cloud providers
• Or maybe for a three-letter agency
• You might be a senior
developer, sysadmin, risk manager, consultant
or auditor

6. LET’S TALK A LITTLE
BIT OF HISTORY

7. Dwight D. Eisenhower
• 5-star general US army
• Supreme commander of
Allied Forces in Europe
WW2.
• Responsible for D-day ‘the
longest day’ invasion of
Normandy June 1944
• 1st Supreme Allied
Commander Europe (NATO)
• 34th president of the USA
(1953-1961)
• Instituted NASA and DARPA

8. Dwight D Eisenhower warns in 1961
• On January 17, 1961, Eisenhower gave his final televised Address to the Nation
from the Oval Office.[204] In his farewell speech, Eisenhower raised the issue of the
Cold War and role of the U.S. armed forces. He described the Cold War: "We face a
hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose and
insidious in method ..." and warned about what he saw as unjustified government
spending proposals and continued with a warning that "we must guard
against the acquisition of unwarranted
influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military–industrial complex." He said, "we recognize the
imperative need for this development ... the potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist ... Only an alert and
knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper
meshing of the huge industrial and military
machinery of defense with our peaceful methods
and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper
together."
2013 update: g/the Cold War/s//Terrorism/

9. “we must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted
influence, whether sought or
unsought, by the
military–industrial complex”

10. DARPA: Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agencies
• Part of the military-industrial complex
• Established 1958 under Eisenhower
• Funds a significant part of all US Information
Technology research.
• Set up ARPAnet in 1969, which we now know as
the Internet
• Arguably the most important founding
(grand)father of “the cloud”

11. Who is who?
• The internet is a product of the military-industrial
complex.
• Who is part of this complex?
– HP, Cisco, AT&T, IBM, Microsoft, most US universities
and research agencies, etc.
– Most of Silicon Valley
– The security industry ….
• That includes you, probably.

12. Whose side are you on?
• Friend or Foe?
• Black hat or white hat?
• Cat or mouse?
• Inventor or user?
• You decide …

13. Personal opinion and story
• I believe there is a role for regulation and
governments in the way we collectively handle
data.
• I don’t believe that uncontrolled access to
data is healthy, neither by governments or
other organizations
• “A car with your name on it is used for an
armed robbery” <- this and similar things have
happened to me.

14. WHAT IS CLOUD COMPUTING AND
WHY ARE PEOPLE USING IT?

15. Cloud computing is a type of IT outsourcing
See NIST definitions on http://www.nist.gov/itl/cloud/
NIST: Cloud computing is a model for enabling
convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool
of configurable computing resources *…+. This cloud
model promotes availability and is composed of five
essential characteristics
• On-demand self-service
• Broad network access,
• Resource pooling
• Rapid elasticity
• Measured Service (pay as you go)
15
Colloquial: Your data on somebody
else’s hard disk.

16. On-demand self
service
Broad network
access
Resource
pooling
Rapid
elasticity
Measured
service
The consumer can
unilaterally decide to change
his resource
consumption, i.e. through a
website, potentially
programmatically
No human intervention at
provider necessary
16

17. On-demand self
service
Broad network
access
Resource
pooling
Rapid
elasticity
Measured
service
The service is accessible
•through a variety of
networks
•by a variety of devices: PC,
server, mobile
The network is a given
17

18. On-demand self
service
Broad network
access
Resource
pooling
Rapid
elasticity
Measured
service
The resources are pooled to
serve a number of
independent users. This is
also called ‘multi-tenancy’.
Resources will be allocated
dynamically.
Resources could be
•Processor capacity
•Storage
•Memory
•Bandwidth
18

19. On-demand self
service
Broad network
access
Resource
pooling
Rapid
elasticity
Measured
service
The resources can be scaled
up and down quickly.
This is done without
provider
intervention, through the
on-demand self service.
19

20. On-demand self
service
Broad network
access
Resource
pooling
Rapid
elasticity
Measured
service
The consumption of the
resource is measured in a
meaningful way, e.g.
memory, processor
capacity, user counts.
This usage can be the basis
for the billing of the
consumer.
20

21. http://infoonsoftwaretesting.blogspot.com/
Software as a Service
Platform as a Service
Infrastructure as a Service
Not all clouds are created equal: three ‘service models’
21

22. Platform as
a Service:
e.g. social
media
integration
Web API / PaaS connection
GET http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.json?screen_name=petersgriddle22

23. Who is hosting my website, really?
Integration happens client side
* Source: Gomez 2010
In November 2010, 30% of web transactions used an Amazon EC2 object
23

24. Companies are flocking to the cloud
because of the business benefits
they experience or expect

25. Business benefit
Generic IT outsourcing
benefits +
• Collaboration
• Speed of deployment
• Fast scale up and down
• Low initial cost
• Low capital cost
• Easier integration
• Wider user base
• …
25
On-demand
self service
Broad
network
access
Resource
pooling
Rapid
elasticity
Measured
service

26. IT is outgrowing the capability of
organizations to manage IT
• IT is still one of the fastest growing and innovative
technologies, 50 years and counting
• From 1:20 to 1:1000 productivity.
– i.e. servers, workplaces, network connections
• Do you think that Joe R. SME can run secure IT in
his closet? Really. What are you smoking?

27. It is ‘cloud’ when the consumer
experiences it as ‘cloud’.

28. The cloud is *BIG*.
Amazon, Google and Microsoft have
200K-2M+ servers, each.
(conservatively)
Akamai runs 10-20% of total
Internet traffic.

29. Disruptive Innovations
Characteristics
• Much cheaper
• Not as good (initially)
• Rapidly improving
• Eventually drives original
out of the market
• Addresses ‘over served’
clients
Examples
• Mass manufacturing
• PC
• Internet
• Wikipedia
• Cloud Computing
29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation

30. •Up to date content
•Lower cost
Editorial content
‘Social’ content
Dutch Olympic
committee
Content hosted at
Flickr, Twitter and
Youtube
30

31. Dutch Olympic committee website
• Challenge: The Dutch Olympic committee had a
traditionally hosted website for the Beijing games
in 2008, running up a bill of more than 150.000
euro.
• Approach: For the Vancouver games they totally
changed the concept. The website became a single
page, hosted in the cloud. This page then pulls in
social media content that is hashtagged #os2010.
• It is displayed on two panes. The top
one, whitelisted by author name, is the editorial
content. The rest is social media content. Run cost
for the new website: a few hundred euro per
month.

32. Oxfam: flexible capacity
• Type of organization: charity, relief aid
• # IT staff: ~200
• Challenge: inconsistent infrastructure, no scalability for
seasonal or exceptional (i.e. natural disasters) demand
patterns
• Approach: IBM private cloud (IaaS)
• http://www.businesscloudnews.com/applications/789-
oxfam-cio-cloud-is-a-philosophical-challenge.html

33. KLM: dispersed workforce
• Type of organization: Airline
• Challenge: dispersed workforce, multilingual,
multiple devices to work on
• Solution: SaaS. Google Apps Premier Edition
for more than 10.000 crew members
• http://googleenterprise.blogspot.nl/2010/02/f
lying-into-cloud.html

34. Canadian Pacific: flexible deployment
• Type of organization: Railroad
• Challenge
– “…lead times to get new infrastructure for
development, for test, for experimentation purposes as
well as production purposes,” said Stuart
Charlton, executive IT advisor at CP.
• Approach: IaaS private cloud plus Amazon;
– IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale for developing distributed
software
• http://www.itworldcanada.com/news/canadian-pacific-gets-
agile-with-hybrid-cloud/145408

35. Commonwealth of Virginia:
Community SaaS
• Type of organization: Public Government
• Challenge: procurement process spread over 171
agencies, most having their own IT systems, controlling
$3B procurement
• Approach: Community SaaS procurement system
(Ariba)
• http://cloud2slg.techamericafoundation.org/wp-
content/uploads/group-documents/3/1328666319-
Final2_Commonwealth_of_VA_ProcurementCaseStudy
.pdf

36. CLOUD SECURITY AND RISK
CONCEPTS

37. Cloud is the same, but different
• Like Websites/web technology
– Technical risk
• but different
– Scalability and elasticity much higher
• Like outsourcing
– Third party risk
• but different
– Speed of control and failure is much higher
– Chains of providers
– More sharing
• Virtualization
– But taken to much higher levels of automation
38

38. Cloud computing implies
massive sharing and scaling
Consolidation risk
– Performance
– Capacity management
– Multi-tenancy leakage
– More ‘collateral damage’ of legal action
– Bigger impact of failures
– More interesting target for cybercrime
You cannot manage this risk on a yearly or even
monthly basis
See Animoto autoscaling (next slide)
39

39. Animoto, EC2 and
RightScaleNumberofservers
Launch of Facebook modification
Peak of 4700 instances
4/14/2008 4/15/2008 4/16/2008 4/18/2008 4/19/2008 4/20/20084/17/20084/13/2008
Using RightScale, Animoto
automatically scaled to
handle a dramatic load to
their application
Inside scoop at http://blog.rightscale.com/2008/04/23/animoto-facebook-scale-up/40

40. Cloud Computing differs from
traditional outsourcing
• Contracts much more flexible/volatile
• More sharing of resources across customers
• Little influence from customer
• More players and layers involved
• More legal implications
41

41. Cloud brings new technology
• Multitenancy
– VMs, storage, databases, application code
• Federated Identity Management
– OpenID, Oauth, SAML
This tends to be a tough challenge for
•Software publishers moving to a SaaS model and
•Hosting companies moving to an IaaS model
42

42. Compliance is harder in the cloud
• More moving parts
• More regulation
– E-DPD, PCI-
DSS, HIPAA, Sox, Ediscovery, Netneutrality, privacy,
etc, etc, etc
• More risk exposure
– The world is our playfield
– Cybercrime
– TLAs
43

43. Cloud Security Alliance
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is an industry
consortium, volunteer based, open.
• Sample products
– CCSK (Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge)
• CSA guidance, ENISA study
– Clouds Controls Matrix
– STAR registry
• Disclosure: I am a certified CCSK trainer, and
Dutch chapter board member.
Similar/complementary efforts underway at
ISO, ISACA, etc.

44. CCSK Course Structure
1 Intro to Cloud Computing
•NIST definitions:
•Essential characteristics
•Service models
•Deployment models
2 Infrastructure Security
for Cloud
•Securing base infrastructure
•Management plane security
•Securing Virtual Hosts and
Networks
•IaaS, PaaS, SaaS security
3 Managing Cloud
Security and Risk
•Risk and Governance
•Legal and Compliance
•Audit
•Portability and
interoperability
•Incident response and more
4 Data Security for Cloud
•Cloud Data Architectures
•Data Security Lifecycle
•Information Governance
•Data security and
Encryption
•Data Loss prevention
5 Securing Cloud
Applications and Users
•Application Security
•Identity and Access
management
6 Selecting Cloud Services
•What to look for in a cloud
provider
•Security as a Service

45. Infrastructure security
• No longer sufficient
• Still required, with additional surface to
protect (hypervisor, management plane)
• More opportunity for fine grained and elastic
controls, especially through automation

46. Data security
• A blanket (perimeter) approach to data
security fails
• The data that matters to you might not be in
your datacenter to begin with
• Lifecycle model allows more precise controls
to be applied
• Encryption can be applied on multiple levels.

47. Application security
• Web security++ (OWASP on steroids)
• Application lifecycle model allows more fine-
grained controls to be applied

48. User security
• Federated ID-management allows decoupling
of Identity Providers and Relying Parties
• Can reduce the need for credential sprawl and
leakage

49. Security as a Service
• The cloud can be a source of security solutions
• E.g. spam filtering, web filtering, management
dashboards, DDOS protection.

50. MANAGING CLOUD
SECURITY
51

51. How does professional security and
risk management work?
• Risk based: professional risk management
prioritizes the most important risks
– No superfluous or useless measures and controls
• Professional risk management incorporates audit
and compliance obligations
– Anchor in operational process, instead of running a
troublesome project for each audit
• Professional risk management is repeatable and
scalable
– Champagne? Really? Did you expect the audit to be a
one time effort?
52

52. Control frameworks
• Cloud security alliance: Cloud Control Matrix
• ISACA : Cobit, mostly cost/value based
• ISO: ISO 27001 Information Security
Management Systems
• CloudControls.org: Dutch initiative
(CloudVPS, KPMG)
• ISO: ISO 20000 Not security but relevant as a
service management and governance
framework
53

53. Cloud Security Alliance
Cloud Control Matrix
• CSA: dominant industry coalition
• Cloud Controls Matrix version 1.3
– soon to be v3.0
• CCM features:
– 11 control areas, 98 controls
– Selectable by S-P-I, Provider/Tenant
– Cross referenced to COBIT, ISO, HIPPAA, PCI-DSS
etc.
54

54. New controls
• 3rd and 4th party management
• Contracts
• SLA
• Identity and Access Management (IAM)
• Escrow
55

55. The future of cloud GRC
• Collaborative effort between provider and
consumer
• Continuous audit
• As automated as possible
• Integrated GRC: risk management in the
widest sense of the word drives governance
– Compliance is a collateral benefit
– Maturity level of organization rises
56

56. CCM (Cloud Control Matrix), CAIQ (Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire),
Cloud Audit and CTP (Cloud Trust Protocol) are products maintained by CSA (Cloud
Security Alliance).
Cloud compliance in real-time
GRC stack
component
Example element
CCM CO-02: Independent reviews and assessments shall be
performed at least annually *…+
CAIQ CO-02.3: Do you conduct regular application
penetration tests of your cloud infrastructure as
prescribed by industry best practices and guidance?
Cloud Audit http://mycloudprovider.com
/cloudaudit/org/cloudsecurityalliance/guidance/CO-02
CTP "It is 11 pm, do you know in which geography your
virtual machines are running?"
57

57. The CAIQ Questionnaire
58

58. Sample Questions to Vendors
Compliance -
Independent Audits
CO-02CO-02a - Do you allow tenants to view your SAS70 Type II/SSAE 16 SOC2/ISAE3402 or
similar third party audit reports?
CO-02b - Do you conduct network penetration tests of your cloud service infrastructure
regularly as prescribed by industry best practices and guidance?
CO-02c - Do you conduct application penetration tests of your cloud service infrastructure
regularly as prescribed by industry best practices and guidance?
CO-02d - Do you conduct internal audits regularly as prescribed by industry best
practices and guidance?
CO-02e - Do you conduct external audits regularly as prescribed by industry best
practices and guidance?
CO-02f - Are the results of the network penetration tests available to tenants at their
request?
CO-02g - Are the results of internal and external audits available to tenants at their
request?
Data Governance -
Classification
DG-02DG-02a - Do you provide a capability to identify virtual machines via policy tags/metadata
(ex. Tags can be used to limit guest operating systems from
booting/instantiating/transporting data in the wrong country, etc.?)
DG-02b - Do you provide a capability to identify hardware via policy
tags/metadata/hardware tags (ex. TXT/TPM, VN-Tag, etc.)?
DG-02c - Do you have a capability to use system geographic location as an
authentication factor?
DG-02d - Can you provide the physical location/geography of storage of a tenant’s data
upon request?
DG-02e - Do you allow tenants to define acceptable geographical locations for data
routing or resource instantiation?
59

59. CSA star
Security, Trust and Assurance Registry (STAR)
• Cloud Security Alliance initiative
• An online clearinghouse where cloud
providers can submit documentation detailing
their security controls for review by potential
customers, indexed by CAIQ reference
• 22 participating providers, including Amazon
Web services, Microsoft Azure.
• www.cloudsecurityalliance/star
60

60. Patriot act !?
• In the context of cloud
computing, the Patriot act hardly
adds anything to the power that
the US federal government
already has in accessing digital
assets worldwide.
• Other governments have
similar, or even more extensive
powers.
• Competitive advantage based on
not having infrastructure on US
territory is speculative, at best.The Sting, Paul Newman to Robert Redford: “If this goes wrong, the Feds will be the least of our problems.”
61

61. WRAP UP

62. The big Cloud Firewall
63

63. • It is a new world out there, and it has only just
begun
• Cloud computing is inevitable
• New security issues *and* controls exist
• You can be an ‘alert and knowledgeable
citizen’ and ‘security and liberty may prosper
together.’
• If you apply your own moral compass

64. Thank you!
More info?
www.clubcloudcomputing.com
and search for CCSK