Ellen Rubin

Cloud security remains a top concern for enterprise cloud deployments. Unresolved policy and control issues make it difficult to meet the requirements of corporate security and networking teams. As a result, we frequently hear from our customers that they assume they can only put the lowest-risk data and applications into the cloud – or that their cloud projects are on hold till the security issues get resolved. This is a major limitation for cloud adoption, often creating a false belief that the cloud only works for apps “that don’t matter,” or for companies who are willing to take risks. Customers Have the Right to Demand More We believe that customers have the right to demand more from the cloud industry when it comes to security. They know the levels of security needed across the range of apps and data in their portfolios. And they shouldn’t have to settle for ... (more)

Active Directory Integration Now Available for Stronger Cloud Security

Security concerns about the public cloud have always been a top priority here at CloudSwitch. Moving to the public cloud is fraught with potential risks and security managers have legitimate concerns about data integrity, an opaque security model in the cloud and unauthorized access by cloud administrators.  The question is: how can you protect information in a shared multi-tenant environment just as you would within the secure confines of your data center?  With that question in mind, I thought it would be useful to review CloudSwitch’s security model while also discussing an ... (more)

Verizon/Terremark – A New Phase in Cloud Computing Begins…

Back in September, I blogged about a strange situation I had noticed in the cloud market: Where Are the Telcos? At that time, Verizon had made their initial announcement about their new CaaS offering for the SMB market, which only seemed to highlight the relative lack of leadership and progress by telcos in the cloud market. With yesterday’s big news about Verizon acquiring Terremark, it appears that the telcos are starting to show up. Several people commented on the earlier blog that my arguments were mainly true for North American telcos, and as I’ve learned since, outside of N... (more)

Now Everybody Wants a Cloud Gateway

In our discussions with industry insiders, we’re hearing more and more about the need for a cloud gateway — technology that provides a bridge between an organization’s internal environment and one or more public clouds. It’s a message we’re also hearing with growing frequency from enterprise customers and potential partners alike as their cloud architectures mature. In the first post of this series, I’d like to look at what’s behind this trend, and why different stakeholders are making the cloud gateway a top priority. First of all, it’s another clear signal that cloud computing... (more)

Protecting Your Cloud Computing Deployments with Enterprise-Class RBAC

We recently talked about CloudSwitch’s security model while highlighting our integration with Active Directory.  Our architecture addresses three areas of protection which we believe are required to make the cloud secure for enterprises – security within the data center, between the data center and the cloud, and within the cloud itself.  Given that this is an area of paramount importance for enterprises I thought it would be useful to continue with the theme of security by discussing our role-based access control (RBAC) model.  CloudSwitch’s RBAC capability is directly related t... (more)