How does the premise of regulations and compliance change
with cloud computing?
As companies move their IT infrastructure to the cloud, they
effectively relinquish some control over their information
infrastructure and processes, even while they are required to bear
greater responsibility for data confidentiality and compliance.
This shift has wide-ranging implications for a broad set of
corporate stakeholders, especially leaders who are responsible for
information.
Cloud environments pose some new challenges to ensure regulatory
compliance since the cloud's lack of physical borders makes it
difficult to comply with jurisdiction-specific privacy legislation.
Many of the technologies, services, methodologies and much of the
know-how needed to secure data and user identities in the cloud
already exist in the enterprise and need to be strategically
extended into the cloud.
How can some of these challenges be tackled leveraging the
cloud environment itself?
One of the significant advantages of cloud computing is that the
virtualization layer provides unprecedented visibility into just
about every activity involved in providing application
services.
In the cloud, security protocols can be built into the
virtualization layer—not just imposed at the application
level where they are typically enforced. By embedding security
policies deeper in the technology stack and diffusing them
throughout the virtual infrastructure of the cloud, enterprises can
establish stronger, smarter security to protect their users and
data.
Today the hardware and virtualization layers which were formerly a
‘black box’ within the cloud can now be inspected,
analyzed and reported for compliance just as the cloud’s
top-most application services layer. With this previously
unimagined level of visibility, cloud providers can now develop
infrastructure-level policy controls and end-to-end security
attestations to handle the most demanding security
requirements.
What are vendors such as RSA doing to encourage an
ecosystem conducive to the adoption of cloud
computing?
We have been working very closely with cloud service and solution
providers and have designed solutions to work with the environment
ground up. We also have strategic relationships with partners such
as VMware, Cisco, Microsoft and EMC, and are already delivering
cloud-ready security solutions along with these companies.