NIST marks top security requirements for government cloud

Grazed from GCN. Author: William Jackson.

Cloud computing offers both unique advantages and challenges to government users. The advantages are well-advertised: Greater efficiency, economy and flexibility that can help agencies meet rapidly changing computing needs quickly and cheaply while being environmentally friendly.

Among the challenges, security is the most commonly-sited concern in moving mission-critical services or sensitive information to the cloud. To address this, a recently released roadmap from the National Institute of Standards and Technology recommends a plan to ensure cloud offerings meet government security needs while being flexible enough to adapt to the policies and requirements of multiple tenants, including foreign governments…

The plan involves periodic assessments of security controls and development of international profiles and standards. The recommendations are brief and make up a small part of the 140-page document released by NIST in October but categorized as “high priority.”…

Read more from the source @ http://gcn.com/blogs/cybereye/2014/11/nist-high-priority-cloud-security-requirements.aspx