Trend Cloud Security Blog – Cloud Computing Experts

What Are the True Dangers of the Cloud?

Posted by Christine Drake in Cloud, Cyber crime, DataCenter, hybrid-cloud, IaaS, PaaS, private cloud, public cloud, SaaS, Secure Data Centers, Securing the Cloud, Security, Threats, Threats from the Cloud, Virtualization Sep 8th, 2011 | 7 Comments We often hear that security and privacy concerns are the main inhibitors to cloud adoption.  But what are the true threats?  Is the cloud really more dangerous than your on-site data center?  I would say that virtualization and cloud computing aren’t inherently more dangerous, but they have unique infrastructure that must be addressed when creating a security foundation.  There are similar attacks across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructures—data-stealing malware, web threats, spam, phishing, bots, etc. So many companies are tempted to deploy their security for dedicated physical...

Agentless Security Gets an “A” on Its Report Card

Posted by Christine Drake in Cloud, DataCenter, Deep Security, private cloud, Secure Data Centers, Securing the Cloud, Virtualization, VMware Aug 30th, 2011 | No Comments In my last blog post, I discussed some of the benefits of agentless security for virtual and private cloud servers. Today at VMworld, Harish Agastya, Director of Data Center Security at Trend Micro, conducted a presentation on Agentless Security for VMware Environments (listed on the Trend Micro VMworld page). Trend Micro released agentless antivirus in Deep Security at last year’s VMworld and has seen impressive results over the last year.  With such success, today Trend Micro announced an extension of its agentless security with new agentless file integrity monitoring (FIM) in Deep Security...

Matching Security to Your Cloud

Posted by Christine Drake in Cloud, IaaS, private cloud, public cloud, Securing the Cloud, Security, Virtualization Aug 30th, 2011 | 7 Comments There’s a lot of talk about cloud computing and cloud security this week as many people are attending VMworld in Las Vegas (follow Trend Micro at VMworld).  But not all types of cloud security are best suited for all types of cloud computing.  When people generically refer to “cloud computing” they usually mean the public cloud.  But what about private clouds or hybrid clouds?  The May 2011 Trend Micro cloud survey results showed that companies are adopting all three models almost equally.  Although there are certainly overlaps in security best practices across these models, there are...

Open Source Clouds Become Enterprise-Grade: Citrix and OpenStack

Posted by Dave Asprey in Citrix, Cloud, Cloud-based Security, cloudbursting, Deep Security, hybrid-cloud, IaaS, PaaS, private cloud, public cloud, SaaS, Securing the Cloud, Security, Smart Protection Network, Virtualization, VMware May 25th, 2011 | No Comments Today at Synergy, Citrix announced “Project Olympus,” effectively making open source clouds a more viable option for enterprises. In the past, it was cloud providers like Rackspace who tended to focus on open source cloud infrastructure, while enterprises tended to make more conservative choices where support contracts were available. The new support from Citrix, along with about 60 other supporting commercial hardware and software vendors, should go a long way towards helping enterprises see OpenStack as an enterprise-grade choice of cloud infrastructure. Enterprises can now get a Citrix-certified...

Encryption in the Public Cloud: Advice for Security Techniques

Posted by Dave Asprey in Cloud, Cloud-based Security, public cloud, Securing the Cloud, Security, Threats from the Cloud, Virtualization Mar 23rd, 2011 | Comments Off Surveys indicate that security is the number 1 challenge about the cloud.  Using encrypted, self-defending hosts mitigates many security-in-the-cloud issues.  Dave Asprey, VP-Cloud Security for Trend Micro, presented to the SD Forum these 16 valuable points of advice regarding data privacy in the cloud.  PLEASE CLICK ON THE “READ MORE” BUTTON TO ADVANCE DIRECTLY TO THE PRESENTATION.   Encryption in the Public Cloud: 16 Bits of Advice for Security Techniques

What is Cloudbursting?

Posted by Bharath Chandrasekhar in Cloud, Cloud-based Security, cloudbursting, DataCenter, hybrid-cloud, private cloud, public cloud, Securing the Cloud, Security, Threats from the Cloud, Uncategorized, Virtualization Mar 15th, 2011 | 8 Comments Do you know what cloudbursting is? It is a concept where when you run out of your computing resources in your internal data center, you “burst” the additional workload to an external cloud on an on-demand basis. The internal computing resource is the “Private Cloud” and the external cloud is typically a “public cloud” for which the organization gets charged on a pay-per-use basis. When your deployment has the ability to do “cloudbursting” or spreading the load to the public cloud, you essentially have a Hybrid Cloud. Hybrid Clouds can deliver a bit...

OpenPaas and CloudBees: Java in the Cloud

Posted by Bharath Chandrasekhar in Cloud, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, Secure Data Centers, Securing the Cloud, Virtualization Feb 28th, 2011 | 1 Comment One of the delivery models of Cloud Computing is Platform-as-a-Service. In its true definition, a PaaS provider takes care of the underlying infrastructure including the VMs, OS patches, elasticity, auto-scaling, firewalling, etc and provides an API — and a language runtime — to which the programmer should write the code. The users of PaaS have no control over the underlying infrastructure, i.e. there is nothing “open” about it. The most prominent PaaS offerings are Force.com from Salesforce (Apex), Google App Engine (Python and Java), and Microsoft Azure (.NET). It is obvious...

The Virtualization Treadmill: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

Posted by Dave Asprey in Cloud, Cloud-based Security, Malware, Securing the Cloud, Security, Smart Protection Network, Virtualization Feb 10th, 2011 | Comments Off Is Virtualization stupid? It forces guest VMs sharing a host to do the same things over and over, without sharing. It takes up countless hours of otherwise useful – and expensive – server time. Sure, it’s better to consolidate servers using virtualization than to leave them on separate hardware, but it’s still just plain wasteful when dozens of VMs on a single server suck CPU cycles to do the same things their neighbors are doing. Why do we allow this? For security and flexibility reasons. The predecessor of desktop virtualization was the Citrix Presentation Server, which...

VMware Kool-Aid: “There’s No Cloud Without Virtualization”

Posted by Dave Asprey in Cloud, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, Virtualization Jan 4th, 2011 | Comments Off   I’m a huge fan of VMware, even though I spent some time competing with them when I ran strategic planning for the Citrix virtualization business (pre-Xen). I even tried to build a cloud with VMware  in 2002, when it wasn’t yet server-grade for data center operations. It’s a killer company with great virtualization software, and it’s done an incredible and outstanding job holding its own against industry giants like Microsoft, and pivoting from hypervisor vendor to cloud infrastructure vendor. That said, I have to wonder why, in this CNET interview, Chris Knowles, VMware’s...

Is the Federal Government’s Shiny New Cloud Secure?

Posted by Dave Asprey in Cloud-based Security, Cyber crime, Privacy, Compliance and Identity, Secure Data Centers, Securing the Cloud, Threats from the Cloud, Virtualization Dec 9th, 2010 | 2 Comments On December 5, 2010 the Washington Post printed this article: “Federal government moves forward with ‘cloud-first’ plan for new technology.” Trend Micro asked our VP of Cloud Security, Dave Asprey, to provide his thoughts and opinions about this government plan.  Here is what Dave wrote: It’s exciting to see that the GSA is leading the way to modernize the federal government’s IT by moving to “the cloud.”   However, in the rush to save money, the GSA may be repeating some mistakes that company IT departments have already made. To go to the cloud, the GSA had to...