Guideline on Effectively Managing Security Service in the Cloud

By Dr. Kai Chen, Director of Cybersecurity Technology, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.

The cloud computing market is growing ever so rapidly. Affordable, efficient, and scalable, cloud computing remains the best solution for most businesses, and it is heartening to see the number of customers deploying cloud services continue to grow.

From the beginning of cloud’s existence, cloud service security has been among the top concerns of deployment. In order to deal with this, various organizations have invested huge efforts on cloud service security standards and researching best practices development and enforcement. Thanks to the efforts of cloud service providers (CSPs), cloud service security has reached an acceptable level. But from the cloud customers’ perspective, it is still somewhat lacking in best practices on how to secure their cloud services. The availability of such guidelines can be especially helpful for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that constantly face shortages of professional security manpower. With this in mind, the Cloud Security Services Management (CSSM) Working Group developed the “Guideline on Effectively Managing Security Service in the Cloud” that applies to various cloud deployment models, from private, public, hybrid to community cloud.

The shared security responsibility model is no stranger to the cloud security community. Every leading CSP has published whitepapers or statements on shared security responsibility, explaining their roles and responsibilities in cloud provisioning. In other words, there are certain security responsibilities that are left to the cloud customers and are written down in cloud service agreements. The complexity is that in reality, given the same concept of shared responsibility, there are different interpretations and implementations among different CSPs. In many cases, it is challenging for cloud customers to clearly understand and bear their responsibilities in practice.

Cloud service security: A how-to

The Guideline provides an easy-to-understand guidance to cloud customers on how to design, deploy, and operate a secure cloud service with respect to different cloud service models, namely IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, helping them ensure the secure running of service systems. With a distinct separation of responsibilities, cloud customers can clearly understand security responsibilities of their own and of CSPs, what security assurance features should be provided to bear these security responsibilities, existing gaps, and how to develop related capabilities to address such gaps.

Additionally, the Guideline provides guidance for CSPs in building cloud platform security assurance systems which can also be used by cloud service security integrators.

Not forgetting third-party security service providers that play important roles in securing cloud services, although according to the shared security responsibility model, they will have no responsibilities in cloud, these providers can leverage on the Guideline to better fit their services to CSPs and/or cloud customers.

The CSSM WG hopes that this effort allows for better understanding of cloud security responsibilities from both customers and CSPs, and through this create a more immaculate cloud security ecosystem.

Download the Guideline on Effectively Managing Security Service in the Cloud now.