There are essentially two types of computing environments:In computing facilities is the traditional way of computing in which you or your company and manage their own systems. All applications you use and your data files are on their own computers in their own facilities, either on individual computers or on a local area network on the premises.
In cloud computing, on the other hand, applications and files are carried out remotely via the Internet (in cyberspace) on a network server that is operated by a third party. You access applications and work on your files from your PC, simply by connecting to the network.
Cloud services are provided by the providers of cloud hosting, companies like Google, Amazon, Oracle Cloud, Rackspace, Microsoft Azure, and so on.
There is nothing fundamentally new about the concept of cloud services. If you are using Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo for your emails, you are using cloud services and has probably been for years.
What is relatively new is the type of services that are being offered in a cloud environment. These now go far beyond email to cover all IT services that control over local computing environment deliver, such as accounting, marketing, human resources and so on.
Advantages of cloud computing
Cloud computing has several advantages over computing facilities:
1) You can run an application or access your files from anywhere in the world via any computer.
2) Cloud computing is cheaper.
3) less technical knowledge is required.
4) Cloud computing offers better performance.
5) Cloud computing is eminently scalable. Increasing the number of applications you use or the amount of data stored does not require a large investment; simply tell the advisor hosting in the cloud.
Given these advantages it is not surprising that in recent years there has been a rapid widespread adoption of cloud computing. Analysts estimate that the growth rate of all spending in the cloud will soon be at least four times faster than the growth rate of total spending on computing facilities.
In fact, analysts expect the annual growth rate of spending on cloud computing for 23.5% compound average from now until 2017. In addition, the spending on cloud services will represent a year probably sixth of all spending on IT products, such as software applications, system infrastructure and basic storage.
Given the rapid growth of cloud computing, the big question of course is whether cloud computing is secure. Is it more or less secure than computing facilities?
The short answer is that cloud computing is not less safe than computing facilities. However, threats are somewhat different in nature, although they are converging.
threats
Overall, there are six major threats to computer security. These are:
Malware - is malicious software such as viruses, Trojans, worms, spyware and zombies. The malware is installed on a PC in your home office computer or server in the cloud. Where the malware gives control of a computer network to a malicious group (eg, to send spam) is called a botnet.
Web application attacks - is an attack in which Web-based applications are addressed. It is one of the most common forms of attack on the Internet.
brute force attack - works by trying all possible combinations of letters or numbers in order to discover a cipher or secret key. For example, you could crack a password when trying several times to guess. modern computing power and speed makes brute force attack a viable form.
Recon - activity recognition is used to choose victims who are vulnerable and valuable.
Vulnerability analysis - is an exploit using a special program to access the weaknesses of computers, systems, networks or applications in order to generate information for planning an attack.
App Attack - is an attack against an application or service that is not running on the web, ie, the program will be on a computer somewhere.
honeypots
A honeypot is a website, network, system or application lure that has been specifically designed to be vulnerable to attack. Its aim is to gather information about the attackers and how they work.
Honeypots allow researchers:
collect data on new and emerging malware and determine trends in threats
identify the sources of attacks, including details of their IP addresses
determine how to carry out attacks and the best way to counter these problems
determine attack signatures (pieces of code that are unique to certain elements of malware) for the anti-virus software can recognize
develop defenses against particular threats
Honeypots have proved invaluable to erect defenses against hackers.
The spring 2014 Report on cloud security
Alert Logic provides security services to both on-premise and cloud computing systems. The company began issuing reports Cloud Security in 2012. Its report spring 2014 Cloud Security covers the year ending 30 September 2013.
This report is based on a combination of security incidents experienced real-world customers and data collected from a series of honeypots, the company set worldwide Alert Logic.
The report sheds some interesting light local mail security and cloud computing customers concerning the company. Here are some of the highlights:
[1] Computing is shifting increasingly to local cloud-based computing and the types of attacks that target systems at the facilities are intended to cloud environments. This is probably due to the increasing value of potential victims in the cloud.
[2] Despite the attacks on cloud environments are increasing in frequency, the cloud is not inherently less safe than traditional in computing facilities.
[3] The frequency of attacks, both on-premise and cloud computing has increased in most types of threats, although for some types of threats that has fallen. These are the main points of comparison between the two computing environments:
The most frequent types of attacks against customers were local mail malware attacks (including botnets) by 56% during the six months ended Sept. 30. In only 11%, these attacks were much less frequent among cloud customers. However, the number of cloud customers who experience these attacks is increasing rapidly, more than doubling in a year.
Attacks that use brute force increased from 30% to 44% of customers of the cloud, but remained stable in environments premise at a high 49%. Vulnerability analyzes increased dramatically in both environments. brute force attacks and vulnerability analysis are producing at almost the same rates in on-premise and cloud environments.
Web application attacks are more likely among cloud customers. However, these attacks have decreased year after year, both in the cloud and computing facilities, like the recons. application attacks increased slightly in both categories of customers.
The most frequent types of attacks vary between on-premise and cloud environments. In the local computer in the first three they were the malware (56% of customers), brute force (49%) and vulnerability analysis (40%), while the cloud of the most common incidents were force gross, analysis of vulnerabilities and attacks web applications, each of which affected 44% of customers.
[4] The incidents based honeypots cloud Alert Logic varied in different parts of the world. Those hosted in Europe attracted twice as many attacks as honeypots Asia and four times more than honeypots in the US .. This can be due to malware 'factories' operating in Eastern Europe and Russia testing its efforts locally before deploying them worldwide.
[5] chilling, 14% of malware collected by honeypots was not detectable in 51% of the major antivirus vendors worldwide. Even more alarming: this was not because it was new malware; much of the malware that was lost was repackaged variations of older malware and therefore should have been detected.
The report concludes with a statement that security in the cloud is a shared responsibility. This is something that individual entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized enterprises tend to forget.
In cloud computing, the service provider is responsible for the basics, to protect the computing environment. But the client is 100% responsible for what happens within that environment and to ensure safety, he or she must have some technical knowledge.
conclusion
Ads service providers in the cloud seem to imply that cloud computing is safer than a computing facility. This simply is not true. Both environments seem to be the hackers to know-a-viz equally safe or unsafe and malicious programs.
The attacks in the cloud are increasing as potential targets are increasingly "robo-worthy '. Therefore, security in the cloud must be as robust as security work in local mail. However, you can not trust only antivirus software vendors to detect all attacks.
Therefore, the best option is to enter an annual maintenance contract with a company computer maintenance online that can regularly access the computer (s) from a remote location and ensure that best protected. This should not cost more than € 120 to € 150 per year, depending on the number of teams that have