How Secure is the Cloud?
I’ve been asked this question a lot lately. Can someone hack into our server from inside the Cloud? Can a different company / user get to our server by mistake, etc. The answer is no, they cannot. At least, not any easier then they could if it was a physical data center.
From a server perspective, the Cloud is very secure. Once the server is initiated in the clients slice of the cloud, users need to be created on the server, just like usual. In order for a user who has been given a login on the server to open a terminal session via an encrypted ssh client, they have to have a special security key file that needs to be used to complete a successful login. This key file, which is unique for each user, supplies the special credentials needed to open a terminal successfully. Without the client and matching server side key, the server is pretty much locked down from attacks from the Cloud perspective.
The need to lock down the server with the typical standard fare of security options still remains though. Open ports are always a weak point and they need to be dealt with. Fortunately for our clients, we are deploying Ubuntu as our Linux operating system and, being Debian based, it has all ports locked down by default. If the server is going to be used as a web based tool, be it for an application or a website, additional standard firewall protection will be implemented to limit access as well.
File system security can be implemented by using, in our case, Ubuntu’s encrypted file system option if the need is there for additional security measures. Most of the other operating systems have something similar to Ubuntu’s encrypted file system which can also be implemented.
Our clients can use the Cloud as a simple storage device as well. During this type of setup, we will work with the client and decide whether or not the data should be private or publicly accessible and set the security accordingly. Keep in mind that a determined hacker is going to do everything they can to get in but, combining all of these precautions together builds a pretty secure system and should help just about anyone sleep easy at night.
