Cloud Security: A Comprehensive Guide to Secure Cloud Computing

Chapter 6. Cloud Computing Security Architecture

It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.

—–Niccolo Machiavelli

With all the advantages of the cloud paradigm and its potential for decreasing costs and reducing the time required to start new initiatives, cloud security will always be a major concern. Virtualized resources, geographically dispersed servers, and co-location of processing and storage pose challenges and opportunities for cloud providers and users.

The security posture of a cloud system is based on its security architecture. While there is no standard definition for security architecture, the Open Security Alliance (OSA) defines security architecture as "the design artifacts that describe how the security controls (= security countermeasures) are positioned, and how they relate to the overall IT Architecture. These controls serve the purpose to maintain the system's quality attributes, among them confidentiality, integrity, availability, accountability and assurance" (http://www.opensecurityarchitecture.org/cms/definitions).

A second definition developed by the Information Security Society Switzerland (ISSS) describes a security architecture as "a cohesive security design, which addresses the requirements (e.g., authentication, authorization, etc.) and in particular the risks of a particular environment/scenario, and specifies what security controls are to be applied where. The design process should be reproducible" (http://www.isss.ch/fileadmin/publ/agsa/Security_Architecture.pdf ...