G-Cloud Security

A very robust solution to Cloud security by a name you know.

HP Labs shares its vision of how cloud computing

could transform public sector IT services

One major impediment to the adoption of cloud computing has been a fear of placing sensitive data up ‘in the cloud.' That's an especially serious concern for government officials charged with managing services – such as healthcare, criminal justice, and defense – that require the storage of highly personal or secret information.

It's one reason why governments want to create their own cloud networks, rather than run their services on public cloud systems.

Martin Sadler, Director,
Systems Security Lab.

Virtualization as a solution to the security challenge

To achieve their potential, cloud networks necessarily separate service providers from the providers of the software and hardware infrastructure that run those services.

"But that begs the question of who is taking care of security," says Martin Sadler, Director of HP's Systems Security Lab. "With all of those handovers and all those different groups of people, it can be anyone's guess."

One solution to this problem is to exploit the very technology that makes cloud computing possible: virtualization. By running virtual systems on top of actual, physical infrastructures, cloud networks can dynamically shift workloads to efficiently accommodate demand within the physical resources available.

Similarly, the job of security can itself be virtualized.

"In effect," says Sadler, "you create virtual machines to watch other virtual machines.

" HP's G-Cloud Demonstrator shows a G-Cloud automatically protecting itself in this way using security technology developed in Sadler's lab. It also allows the cloud system to be viewed from a number of perspectives.

"For some people concerned with security, a top-level view of the system is the only thing that matters," Sadler notes. "But then other people want to see different levels of abstraction, all the way down to those who want to see packets flying around. And with this Demonstrator, you're actually able to do that."

As a result, IT administrators can alter how they think about security. "It's now a resource," argues Sadler. "The moment you think you're under attack, the systems deploy more resources dynamically to mitigate it. But the moment you cease to be under attack, it releases those resources back up."

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