Cloud computing has turned into a serious and highly profitable business, both for server providers, hosts and clients alike. Big companies are striving to transfer their data from hard disks and USBs to the cloud, where everything can be edited, viewed and transferred anyhow and anytime.
Still, there are two major concerns deriving from this transfer of data in terms of security. First, clients seem a tad unsure on the visibility of data that employees and third parties could gain access to. Second, keeping your data in one virtual location on the web rather than in hard copies, gives people the advantage of gaining unauthorised access from the comfort of their homes. In other words, when you’re trying to connect and expand the ecosystem that surrounds your data, you’re inevitably going to connect to other parties as well.
Thankfully, Google rolled out some new, heavy security updates that aim in providing businesses with a more secure environment which they’ll have more control over.
The new updates have already been introduced to basic features such as Gmail, Calendar and Google Drive. As for the Google Cloud Platform, the tech giant has promised to add a firewall to further prevent data attacks and breaches.
Speaking of Google Cloud, Sam Ramji, the company’s vice president of Google Cloud product development, proudly announced the Cloud Security Command Center. This will be a platform where admins will be able to view and check the security of their data throughout the entire company. What’s best with CSCC is that despite its relatively recent announcement, five container security companies have already intergraded their tools to provide extra features.
For the record, those ‘container runtime security partners’ are Aqua Security, Capsule8, StackRox, Sysdig Secure and Twistlock. All tools are oriented in pinpointing vulnerabilities, preventing and blocking attacks. However each tool uses differed graphics environments and provides a different set of features, so if you want to dive in headfirst to more information, feel free to check Google’s official blog announcement.
In addition to all the above, the company also announced Asylo, a ‘an open-source framework and SDK for developing applications that run in trusted execution environments (TEEs)’, as the official post describes it. The word ‘asylo’ means safe place in Greek and the basic idea behind the new framework is to protect data and apps in the cloud by encrypting communication channels and verifying the code in execution environments – also known as enclaves.
Todd Moore, Senior Vice President of Data Protection at Gemalto puts it this way:
“Asylo makes it easy to attach container-based applications to securely isolate computations. Combining this with Gemalto’s SafeNet Data Protection On Demand paves the way to build trust across various industry applications. Using Asylo, we envision our customers gaining deployment flexibility across multiple cloud environments and the assurance of meeting strict regulatory requirements for data protection and encryption key ownership.”
It seems that with this new partnership and Google’s new strict security measures, the Cloud Platform project is seeking to earn a rightful place among businesses and judging by the existing competition, there’s no reason for that not to happen.
