Assessing the Risks and Opportunities of Cloud Computing

Defining Identity Management Systems and Maturity Models. Despite the potential that Cloud Computing has for revolutionizing every aspect of the software industry, there are significant shortcomings in the area of security and risk assessment and mitigation. The basic value proposition of Cloud Computing is that by leasing applications online, companies have the potential to significantly reduce their operating costs. What is not often pointed out however is the fact that identity management on Cloud Computing platforms is still in its nascent or very embryonic stages. Often identity management systems fail to fully protect all assets of a given Cloud Computing platform as role-based access has yet to be defined and implemented. Lacking is a protocol stack of Cloud Computing Identity Management and a maturity model to assist organizations in assessing their relative levels of risk. The intent of this analysis is to provide the frameworks for both the protocol stack and maturity model for Cloud Computing platforms.

Assessing the Risks and Opportunities of Cloud Computing – Defining Identity Management Systems

and Maturity Models

R.PalsonKennedy Research Scholar, A.P, RREC

Anna University, Chennai-95, India

palsonkemmedy@yahoo.co.in

T.V.Gopal Dept of CSE CEG,Anna University, Chennai-25, India

Abstract— Despite the potential that Cloud Computing has for

revolutionizing every aspect of the software industry, there are

significant shortcomings in the area of security and risk

assessment and mitigation The basic value proposition of

Cloud Computing is that by leasing applications online,

companies have the potential to significantly reduce their

operating costs What is not often pointed out however is the

fact that identity management on Cloud Computing platforms

is still in its nascent or very embryonic stages Often identity

management systems fail to fully protect all assets of a given

Cloud Computing platform as role-based access has yet to be

defined and implemented Lacking is a protocol stack of Cloud

Computing Identity Management and a maturity model to

assist organizations in assessing their relative levels of risk The

intent of this analysis is to provide the frameworks for both the

protocol stack and maturity model for Cloud Computing

platforms

Keywords- Cloud computing,Risk,Security,IMS

I INTRODUCTION

A Assessing Cloud Computing

The collection of technologies that comprise the Cloud

Computing platforms being sold as services today have been

in existence for decades as the basis of enterprise systems

and platform deployments Specifically including

integration platforms including Enterprise Application

Integration (EAI), networking platforms and products and

servers, and strong reliance on TCP/IP, with the inclusion of

data center virtualization algorithms to ensure their

scalability, Cloud Computing platforms are an outgrowth of

enterprise-wide networks that had been created in previous

decades

Despite how time-tested these core components are, the

relatively recent developments in Web-based application

development have created security vulnerabilities at the

application and also at the service provider level Given how

cloud providers must integrate disparate, often conflicting

database together to create a multi-tenancy platform the

tendency to cut corners and do AJAX-based scripting that

exposes an entire application online has been known to

occur The underlying technologies are fundamentally sound

yet the cloud providers in many cases are not taking all necessary

Precautions in creating multi-tenancy and secured client locations on their servers Often organizations contracting with cloud providers may be attracted to the very low prices offered for hosting yet have no idea of the risks and potential security lapses that could result due to the providers’ unwillingness to invest in adequate Web-based security Studies indicate the plummeting prices of Cloud storage and application hosting are partially driven by the cost reductions made possible by cutting corners on security To have an appreciation of the trade-offs being made from a security standpoint, it is imperative to understand the levels or fundamental structure of Cloud Computing Fig 1 presents the structure with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) at the bottom of the protocol stack, as this is the foundation on which Cloud-based platforms are built IaaS is comprised of those technologies which have the greatest number of years

in use and as a result many of them have advanced security and encryption algorithms associated with them Servers, networking, data centers and storage including storage area networks (SANs) have advanced authentication and verification technologies associated with them, many in single-instance installation

Figure 1: Fundamental Structure of Cloud Computing

The use in multi-instance or multi-tenant architectures is

still being defined through the rapid maturation of the Cloud

Computing industry The build-out of Cloud Computing

platforms from Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to Platform

as a Service (PaaS) is based more on scalable databases,

middleware, Web 2.0 applications and Java runtime

applications in addition to AJAX programming techniques

and applications This is the layer that has security

vulnerabilities inherent within it from the standpoint of

development languages meant more for single-instance,

relatively light duty cycle applications instead of

multi-tenant, in-depth application development As a result it is

very common in security audits to finding scripting attacks

launched at servers in this area with attacks being successful

in impersonating administration and user accounts Java

runtime applications are often designed with the assumption

of open collaboration across groups and therefore default to

shared resources across networks This is potentially

disastrous in a Cloud Computing platform as it opens up all

the data in the hosted application and its databases

The top layer of the structure of Cloud Computing is the

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) layer This is the layer that

includes business process management (BPM) extensive

collaboration and social networking applications including

Facebook, Twitter (Vijayan, et.al.) and others, and thousands

of industry and enterprise applications as well These are the

most susceptible areas to hackers as often developers, in the

rush to get social networking applications out and be the next

Facebook or Twitter, fail to ensure enough security

guidelines and safeguards are in place The many security

problems Twitter has had, from their internal servers being

hacked and celebrities’ username and passwords posted to

the Internet to their site being hijacked by hacker groups

loyal to the Iranian government all illustrate how porous this

level of the SaaS model Twitter has been a very vocal

proponent of free speech in Iran and has as a result been

attacked by loyalists to that nation and industry observers

suspect the government itself Facebook has often been

hacked as well, as have been many other social networking

sites Despite assurance to the contrary, SaaS-based

applications are easily hacked into and taken over as the case

of the Iranian loyalists gaining complete control over Twitter

for a full day before the start-up could regain control of their

site SaaS-based applications are fraught with risk due to the

use of development technologies originally meant for single

use, not multi-tenant platforms

B Protocol Stack

What is missing from Cloud Computing security

platforms today is a unified protocol stack that can integrate

access management, administration, provisioning, and Web

Services into a single, unified platform Integrating together

these concepts into single contiguous platform architecture

has the potential to deliver greater scalability and

performance for Cloud based applications and platforms

Fig.2, Protocol Stack for Cloud Computing Identity

Management shows how each of these components can be

integrated together for Based on analysis and interpretation

of the following sources: (Cuppens, Cuppens-Boulahia,

2008) (Das, Echambadi, McCardle, Luckett, 2003) (Gupta, Roth, 2007)(Ray, Stoica, Farkas, 2004) (Swart, Marshall, Harris, Forcht, Olsen, 2005) (Vijayan, 2007)

Using the Protocol Stack for Cloud Computing Identity Management to analyze the levels of maturity within Cloud services providers, analyzing existing research and best practices in identity and role-based management, the following Cloud Computing Identity Management Maturity Model has been designed (Table-1)

Figure 2: Protocol Stack for Cloud Computing Identity Management Systems

TABLE I C LOUD C OMPUTING IMMM

The stages range from 0 that signify isolated silos, to Stage 1

for Central Administration, Stage 2 for user self-service,

stage 3 for role-based access control and stage 4 for

integrated user management Based on analysis of the

following sources: (Das, Echambadi, McCardle, Luckett,

2003) (Saltzman, 2006) (Swart, Marshall, Harris, Forcht,

Olsen, 2005) Characteristics and results are shown for each

of these specific stages of the maturity model Additional

studies suggest that the development of pilots for AJAX and

XML security integration in the Cloud coupled with support

for Web Services increases the pace of maturity in this

model

II MULTI-TENANCY ANALYSIS

A Paper Thin Walls of the SaaS Community

The concept of multi-tenancy states that an application is

used equally across a series of users, each receiving

comparable or equitable levels of responsiveness and

bandwidth through the use of the Tenant Load Balancer

Figure 3, Maturity Levels in Tenancy Design illustrates the

progression of the SaaS industry from single-tenant to full

multi-tenant Beginning with Level 1 which is fully

single-tenant, shows a one-for-one correspondence between the

application in use on the SaaS platform and the user

requesting it This does not scale well from a performance

or security standpoint, and is primarily the architecture that

led to the Application Service Provider (ASP) market

quickly transitioning to the OnDemand or Level 3 The

essence of Level 3 is that it is a configurable multi-tenant

architecture that has the functional ability to scale to

individual users’ needs without sacrificing speed Level 4 is

state-of-the-art today and uses constraint-based technologies

for ensuring optimal application performance over time As

can be seen from Fig 3, the use of a Tenant Load Balancer

can significantly increase the profitability of a service

provider, as their investment in a single application can be

scaled across many different users concurrently with no

degradation in performance Multi-tenancy gets much

mention as the core of the SaaS architecture yet as with

many areas of Cloud Computing, definitions vary by who is

giving them

For hardware vendors the virtualization aspects of Cloud Computing as it relates to running a full 128-bit multithreaded Tenant Load Balancer complete with algorithms for virtualizing servers and minimizing disk and memory latency times through caching

Conversely software-based definitions of Cloud Computing concentrate on the multi-tenancy aspects as it relates to speed improvements using AJAX, J2EE- and RISC-based programming languages that can be optimized for use over XML networks (Formica, et.al.) A third group concentrates their definition of Cloud Computing on the services and interprocess communication that is possible using these applications and the underlying XML networks Inherent in their definition is the assumption that Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) (English, 16) will eventually dominate on Cloud-based platforms (Young, Madans, 147) The assumption of scalability from the infrastructure through application to presentation layer of the Cloud Computing model is made in this definition of the concept The use of XML as a scalable network for ensuring integration across these platforms has proven to be highly effective from a performance and cost standpoint as well (Formica, 241, 242) Unifying all of these definitions is the common thread of Cloud Computing being a platform that comprises a series of dynamically scalable shared resources that can be metered

by use or computing resources taken per task What each of them lacks however is a unified definition of a security model that is consistent with each other The hardware security model is purely based on virtualization algorithms being developed to allow for 128-bit to 512-bit encryption; it

is very hardware centric The software security model is based more on authentication and validation of identities including attempts to impersonate and gain access as administrator or power user than on locking down the hardware or even the XML network Finally the services definition of Cloud Computing is more focused on the business process integration areas of the architecture than anything else In short there is no unified, single security model for Cloud Computing that unifies these attributes and that presents a significant risk

III RISK IMPLICATIONS

A RI of Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms

In conjunction with the lack of a single security model across the hardware, software and services aspects of Cloud Computing there are also a corresponding lack of security guidelines and consistency in the area of authentication, security and encryption across the emerging areas of Private Clouds, Public Clouds and a Hybrid Cloud Fig 4 compares these different infrastructures at a definitional level The lack of a consistent security models across all of these Cloud types is also leading to confusion and the very high risk of one customer being able to see another’s data in a Private or Hybrid Cloud for example The Amazon Web Services platform, designed with application tools predicated on social networking design objectives of being purely collaborative and egalitarian by default share every data

Figure 3: Maturity Levels In Tenancy Design

element in an Amazon Web Services account This has led

to users being able to see other user’s information and the

ability to even run reports in other’s Amazon Web Services

Accounts (Siegel, et.al.) Clearly there is significant room

for improvement in how individualized user accounts are

managed

Amazon is one of the largest and most well-respected cloud

services providers globally as well With their financial

support from Amazon.com one wonders how other smaller

cloud services providers are managing these costs and the

tradeoffs for security

IV CLOUD SECURITY &RISK

A Strategies To Mitigate Cloud Security Risk And Ensure

Security

There have been admittedly few security models that

span the entire breadth of the Cloud Computing

Infrastructure stack The one that has been most consistently

evaluated and applied of the new is the Confidentiality,

Integrity and Availability (CIA) Model (Brynko, et.al 3)

The essence of this model is a focus on balancing the triad

objectives of confidentiality, integrity and availability

(Ashford, 3) The definitions of each of these components

are as follows Confidentiality is defined as the ensuring that

information is not disclosed to unauthorized persons

Integrity is defined within this model as ensuring that

information held in a system is an accurate and proper

representation of the data intended and that it has not been

modified or changed by anyone unauthorized to edit or copy

it (Ashford, 3) Third, Availability is defined through the

ensuring that information processing resources are

immediately cut off and discontinued for malicious attacks

underway on a SaaS or Cloud Computing platform (Ashford,

3) These three form the triad of the model with

non-repudiation being the ensuring that agreements made

electronically be audited and proven over time (Ashford, 3)

(Brynko, et.al.)

Given the dearth of models specifically focused on Cloud

Computing security this one has been adopted and used as

the foundation of system and entire cloud provider audits

(Ashford, 3) in addition to fall-back planning in the event of

a malicious attack on a Cloud Computing services provider (Zimski, et.al 34.) In addition the use of the triad model has also been used as part of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that service providers use as their primary contracts with customers In fact given the magnitude of the recent security gaffe at Amazon Web Services (Siegel, et.al 26,27.) the focus is more than ever on applying services metrics of performance to the attainment of high security levels for Cloud-based applications (Zielinski, et.al 33.) Cloud computing has in fact entered an entirely new era where contract management and the use of SLAs to guarantee security and define stiff penalties and fines if data and applications are not kept safe has arrived (Burge, et.al.) In fact CIOs are now being advised to get their legal team involved in the very beginning negotiations with Cloud Computing vendors to ensure that data and applications are protected under contract as well (Nash, 34) Clearly litigation will be an issue if data and applications are compromised on the Cloud Computing platform in the coming years Organizations are in fact taking the necessary steps to protect their information assets online despite claims

of perfect security on Cloud Computing providers’ platforms

Another significant factor in the adoption of the Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability (CIA) Model (Brynko, et.al.) is the decision by Cloud Computing early adopters to move their legacy applications online (Brodkin, et.al 2.) The decision to move legacy applications to the Cloud is one that has inherent cost advantages yet very significant risks due to the many integration links to legacy data, some in an organizations’ databases requiring open access to cloud providers’ via XML (Garakanidze, 19) The integration aspects of legacy applications being moved to the cloud is one of the riskiest from a security standpoint there is (Lamont, et.al.) CIOS who are given the task of deciding which applications will move to a Cloud Platform and when are often first to point to security concerns and the need for continual auditing of the chosen provider’s site (Creeger, 6)

B Information Security

Security related to the information exchanged between different hosts or between hosts and users This issues

pertaining to secure communication, authentication, and issues concerning single sign on and delegation Secure

communication issues include those security concerns that arise during the communication between two entities These include confidentiality and integrity issues Confidentiality indicates that all data sent by users should be accessible to only “legitimate” receivers, and integrity indicates that all data received should only be sent/modified by “legitimate” senders

Solution: public key encryption, X.509 certificates, and the

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) enables secure authentication and communication over computer networks

V CONCLUSION

Cloud computing has a significant cost advantage over

Figure 4 : Comparing Public, Private and Cloud Computing Platforms

traditional enterprise software yet is fraught with risks

(Golden, 13) The intent of this analysis has been to present

the fundamentals of cloud computing, how they are changing

quickly into public, private an hybrid clouds and the

implications on organizations over time Foremost among

all of these trends is the fact there is not a single unified

security model that can in depth define each aspect of a

cloud for security level validation The role of the CIO is

then becoming more of a validator of what cloud computing

vendors claim to have in terms of security versus what they

actually do (Creeger, 6)

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