Cloud Component Specifications

From a user perspective, the cloud is a service. However, for Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), integrators and channel partners who construct or build the cloud, the cloud architecture consists of many cloud computing components. Examples of these cloud components are: hypervisors, cloud operating systems components such as “Swift”, “Glance” for OpenStack, virtual desktop infrastructure platforms, cloud dedicated firewalls and so on. 

Current standards are insufficient to evaluate the security of cloud components.  

Currently, most of the security standards related to cloud computing focus on the information security management system. However, these standards are insufficient to evaluate cloud component security because they focus on management security rather than the technical security requirements of the components. 

The most basic cloud component is the cloud OS—a feature with functionality that closely resembles the relationship between Linux and a computer. Through the utilization of virtualization technology, cloud OS virtualizes hardware resources of physical servers and storage area network devices and supports software-defined networking. Along with virtualization, cloud OS also provides management and configuration capabilities on virtualized hardware resources. Furthermore, it affords many other capabilities and functions like disaster recovery, firewalls, load balancers, access control, and backup control to enhance the performance and security of cloud computing systems as well as the user experience of administrators and users. 

In order to start addressing the gap in security best practices for cloud components, this group started by creating technical security specifications for cloud OS.