Cloud Security & the Application Environment
The ScaleUp Cloud is the result of over a year of work by our internet4YOU team and has been made possible in concert with 3Tera®, the leading innovator of cloud computing technology. ScaleUp leverages 3tera’s AppLogic™ cloud computing platform for our solution. AppLogic is a grid operating system which enables cloud computing for running and scaling web applications.
Better Security Through Fixed & Defined App Communication Channels
AppLogic is oriented around “Applications” which are networks of Appliances in a private address space – essentially a virtual private data center. When we build an application environment on ScaleUp, we have to define which appliance is allowed to talk (connect via network) to other appliances and which protocols should be allowed. So even though all appliances (virtual machines) are on the same cloud/network, they cannot directly talk with each other via the internal network without us defining this (all via AppLogic).
A higher level of security is achieved when using ScaleUp, because all components of an application (webservers, database servers, etc.) do not have external network interfaces. They always have to be connected to a so called gateway appliance (IN appliance), which is basically another virtual machine running a linux based firewall. Only via the IN (or OUT/NET appliances) they are able to talk to the outside (internet).
In this multi-part ‘Security in the Cloud’ series we’ll dive deeper into a number of key security, privacy & access control topics. Our next post will analyze 2 of the most common fears – a focus on Data Control & Data Privacy.
Check out the the 1st Article – The Cloud is NOT Less Secure.
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