Virtualization is transforming the IT landscape gradually but steadily. It has completely revolutionized the way of computing. With aggressive use of virtualization, organizations are increasingly reducing hardware utilization, saving energy and costs and making it possible to run multiple applications as well as operating systems on the same server at a time. In this way, cloud computing virtualization happens to be a great catalyst that improves and enhances the utilization, efficiency and flexibility of existing computer hardware.
Why Organizations Need Virtualization?
As we have briefly discussed above, virtualization offers several benefits to the companies. Most of them are relying on this technology for saving time and energy, decreasing costs and minimizing overall risk. In addition to this, the technology serves other noteworthy benefits too. Other key benefits that virtual clouds offer include- Secure remote access and data loss prevention among others.
How Virtualization Does Work?
Virtualization is performed using a software that is also called as a virtualization manager. The software acts as a bridge between the hardware and the operating system. The software is the core unit that decides the share of processor and other hardware resources applications and operating systems will access.
Now, let's discuss the type of Cloud virtualization.
Hardware/Server Virtualization:
This is frequently performed virtualization technique. This helps in achieving maximum hardware utilization and application uptime. In this arrangement, many small physical servers are integrated into one large physical server to let the processor function effectively. The operating system that is running on a physical server gets converted into a well-defined OS that runs on the virtual machine. In this case, the virtualization manager controls the processor, memory, and other components by enabling different OS to run on the same machine. This is further categorized in three types namely: Full virtualization, Para Virtualization and Partial Virtualization.
Network Virtualization:
Under this arrangement, management and monitoring of a computer network is established as a single managerial entity from a single software-based administrator’s console. The arrangement helps to improve network optimization of data transfer rates, scalability, reliability, flexibility, and security. Using network virtualization, companies can easily automate network administrative tasks. If you run a network that is huge, rapid and consumes massive resource, you may go for network virtualization. The primary benefit of this arrangement is improved network productivity and efficiency.
Storage Virtualization:
This is another important virtualization type in cloud computing. Here, multiple network storage resources are present as a single storage device for easier and more efficient management of these resources. The benefits of this type of virtualization includes improved storage management, better availability of resources, reduced downtime and better storage utilization.
Memory Virtualization:
This is a way to dissociate memory from the server. The disintegration is done to provide a shared, distributed or networked function. It eventually accelerates performance by providing greater memory capacity without any addition to the main memory. This is why a portion of the disk drive serves as an extension of the main memory. The integration is categorized in two ways: application-level integration and operating system level integration.
Software Virtualization:
It enables main computer to run and create one or more virtual environments. This type of virtualization primarily used to enable a complete computer running as a guest OS. For instance letting Linux to run as a guest that is natively running a Microsoft Windows OS (or vice versa, running Windows as a guest on Linux). The virtualization is of different kind including operating system virtualization, application virtualization and service virtualization.
Desktop Virtualization:
Desktop virtualization for cloud provides businesses the work convenience and security they need. As the arrangement allows access remotely, administrators can access resources and work from any location and on any PC. This virtualization offers complete flexibility for employees to work from home or on the go and protects confidential data from being lost or stolen.
Cloud environment constantly faces constant threats from security breaches and malicious attacks from insider as well as outsider sources. Experts believe on adapting precautionary measures like tough information security, comprehensive compliance reporting and API analysis in order to put a vigil on these threats.
Being the entirely new shift in the dimensions of information technology, cloud computing has offered new potential, innovation and paradigm to the industry verticals. Whole industry is now very much excited from the agility and on-demand provisioning of computing offered by the cloud vision. Among all the rejoice and nice swings, one thing that is still haunting the experts is the associated risks and strategies to fight with.
The risks and threats are of the same extent both for the cloud service providers and cloud customers as well. The article is a comprehensive coverage of the industry standards that deal with the industry practices in order to secure cloud computing environment. Various organizations that deal in the domain of cloud computing have a very comprehensive approach to manage cloud guidance strategies. Below illustrated are the threats associated with the cloud computing:
Abusive and Flagrant use of Cloud Computing
The cloud environment offers several added utilities to the users including unlimited bandwidth and and storage capacity to run the applications smoothly. Some providers even allow other benefits like free limited trial periods and additional usage. These user models frequently come under the security threats and malicious attacks. The areas where these attacks could have the bigger impacts Future areas of concern includes decoding and cracking of the password, launching potential attack points and executing malicious commands. You may protect your application from the threat by:
- Applying stringent registration and validation processes
- Performing more deliberate monitoring and coordination throughout the computing platform
- Analyzing the customer network traffic.
- Monitoring network blocks
- Serious breach in interfaces and APIs
Cloud computing users have smooth access of a comprehensive set of software interfaces or APIs manage and execute internal communication with cloud services. These APIs play an integral part during Provisioning, management, orchestration, and monitoring of the processes running in the cloud environment. It's recommended to monitor the authentication and access control and other associated encryption and activity monitoring policies to prevent any malicious attack. There exists many ways in which you can prevent such breach:
- Security model analysis of cloud APIs
- Strong authentication and access controls
- API dependency chain evaluation
Insider threats and attacks
These kind of attacks and breaches are done due to the lack of transparency into the cloud provider s delivery mechanism and procedure. Any superficial command over the level of access could lead to various adversaries like corporate hacking and organized business threats in the domain of business verticals. You can prevent such cloud computing threats by:
- Applying overall information security
- Full fledged compliance reporting
- Effective breach notification processes