Grazed from FedTechMagazine. Author: Nicole Blake Johnson.

There was a time when Defense Department officials balked at the idea of integrating commercial cloud services with military networks, let alone hosting sensitive data in a contractor-owned facility. But those sentiments are evolving, along with the options DOD is considering for developing a commercial cloud ecosystem for its users.

The department is exploring two private cloud deployment models that would put commercial cloud technologies in DOD data centers or adjacent to them, the Defense Information System Agency noted in a request for information last month. As the entity charged with tracking how DOD operates cloud connection points and what technology is operating across the network, DISA is exploring those models’ viability and whether they warrant a request for proposal to industry…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Marissa Tejada.

Firms of all sizes are evaluating the kind of virtualized storage that is best for them. But as cloud computing technology grows in popularity — yielding new software, servers and backup systems — security remains a top concern.

Lack of Awareness

A Ponemon Institute study commissioned by SafeNet discovered that as firms continue to implement cloud services, they are unsure of how to secure their data. In fact, 47 percent of respondents said IT security professionals are not involved in decisions about cloud computing technology, while 44 percent of a firm’s corporate data that is stored in the cloud is not managed by staff in the IT department…

Grazed from BusinessWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

Today at Dell World, Dell unveiled findings from its first Global Technology Adoption Index (GTAI), which uncovered how organizations are truly using security, cloud, mobility and big data to drive success. The market research surveyed more than 2,000 global organizations and found that security is the biggest concern in adopting cloud, mobility and big data.

Furthermore, while 97 percent of organizations surveyed use or plan to use cloud and nearly half have implemented a mobility strategy, big data adoption is trailing as approximately 60 percent of organizations surveyed do not know how to gain its insights…

Grazed from USAToday. Author: Elizabeth Weise.

Companies are throwing sensitive data into the cloud as fast as they can get it there, to save money and be more nimble. But safety is a concern. An IBM survey out Wednesday finds that 44% of corporate security leaders are convinced a major security breach is bound to happen. "We asked them ‘What’s the number one, big security issue that’s going to happen?’ and that’s what they honed in on," said IBM’s Marc van Zadelhoff, vice president of strategy and product management for IBM Security System.

Cloud computing is big and getting bigger.

"Just about every large company we deal with has moved something into the cloud, with plans to move more," said Jon Oltsik, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group in Mitford, Mass. Still, many Americas are still a little … cloudy… on just what it is. A survey by IT company Citrix found that 51% of Americans thought stormy weather could interfere with cloud computing…

Read more from the source @ http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/11/05/ibm-cloud-security/18424315/

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Matthew Finnegan.

OpenStack chief operating officer Mark Collier has taken aim at ‘monolithic’ public cloud provider Amazon Web Services, claiming it is unable to meet enterprise customer demand for localised data centre capacity. Addressing delegates at OpenStack Summit in Paris, Collier said that the network of operators running its open source cloud management software was more comprehensive than that of its rival.

This is despite AWS’ announcement of a second European data centre in Germany last month in order to address data sovereignty demands, expanding on its Irish facility. “You might say they have a lot of capacity, that they are in every region of the world. But if that capacity is not in the country that you need, then it is not really capacity,” he said…

Grazed from VirtualizationReview. Author: Dan Kusnetsky.

Two of the major Linux distributors, Red Hat Inc. and SUSE, appear to believe that becoming the dominant supplier of cloud services and technology will allow them to continue to battle mainframes, Windows and single-vendor Unix in both corporate and services provider datacenters. Both of these suppliers have made recent announcements based on cloud-related products and services. Let’s take a look at what they’re doing.

The Red Hat Cloud Strategy

Red Hat has made a number of announcements centering on the cloud. A July 2014 press release described its latest integration with OpenStack, Red Hat OpenStack Platform 5. It offered the most recent edition of OpenStack and enfolded it in its usual support policies in the hopes of making open source technology a safe and reliable choice for enterprises. It also tied in strongly with VMware Inc. infrastructure…

Grazed from NextGov. Author: Editorial Staff.

The Defense Information Systems Agency currently offers its military customers certified cloud computing services from three vendors and has another seven under assessment for compliance with governmentwide security standards, top agency officials told Nextgov. FedRAMP reviews aim to speed the adoption of cloud deployments across government by allowing cloud services to be vetted once – at a particular security level – and then deployed by a multitude of agencies. Agencies must comply with FedRAMP as a matter of federal policy.

But as noted in a recent review from the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, neither the FedRAMP program office nor the Joint Authorization Board — made up of the chief information officers of General Services Administration and the departments of Defense and Homeland Security — can force agencies to comply with FedRAMP…

Read more from the source @ http://www.nextgov.com/defense/whats-brewin/2014/11/disa-compliance-cloud-security-standards/98120/?oref=ng-HPriver

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: CJ Arlotta.

A new study from the Ponemon Institute and SafeNet revealed that when it comes to data security and the cloud, the majority of IT departments are "left in the dark." The study of more than 1,800 IT professionals, titled "The Challenges of Cloud Information Governance: A Global Data Security Study," showed 71 percent of respondents said they believe it is more difficult to use conventional security practices to protect sensitive data in the cloud.

Instead, IT departments often rely on encryption and multi-factor authentication to safeguard their data in the cloud. "While the cloud has revolutionized the way IT is delivered, many IT organizations are finding it difficult to keep up with demand for these services and the security implications that are created when critical data is stored in the cloud," Tsion Gonen, SafeNet’s chief strategy officer, said in a prepared statement…

Grazed from TechRepublic. Author: Conner Forest.

The advent and growth of cloud computing impacted almost every aspect of enterprise IT. Perhaps one of the biggest unresolved issues raised in the wake of the cloud revolution is how it has changed the way businesses look at security. On Tuesday, November 4, Palerra came out of stealth with its LORIC product to take a stab at fixing some of the security problems in the cloud stack. Palerra, formerly known as Apprity, was founded by enterprise software veterans Rohit Gupta and Ganesh Kirti with the goal of automating security in the enterprise.

"Holistically, the ability to automate forensics and automate incident response in this dramatic threat landscape that we live in, we think is absolutely critical for the health of the enterprise," Gupta. According to Gupta, security requirements have evolved from being inline in the network with early web apps, to the edge with mobile devices, and are now needed at the source, meaning the source of the data or application you are managing. Palerra focuses on "at the source" security…

Read more from the source @ http://www.techrepublic.com/article/palerra-comes-out-of-stealth-to-automate-enterprise-security/

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Mike Kavis.

On a recent flight home after meeting with a large bank, I started reflecting on how the conversations about cloud computing with clients have changed over the last 12 to 24 months. In 2012 and 2013, a lot of the conversations where focused on “what is cloud computing,” “help us build a cloud strategy” or “how do we automate our infrastructure.” As we near the end of 2014 these conversations have changed drastically. Most progressive enterprises are knowledgeable about all of the different cloud service models (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS), have researched the major vendors, have started executing on their cloud strategy, and have become experts at managing the IaaS layer. The focus now appears to be moving up the stack towards the application layer.

2015: The year of cloud applications

Many enterprises have already laid the basic foundational work for their clouds and we’re seeing a mixture of private and public clouds being implemented with a high level of automation at the infrastructure layer. Enterprises have invested a lot of time into implementing guardrails around their clouds so that developers can consume the cloud services in a secure and compliant manner…