BOOK REVIEWSEDITED BY PIOTR CHOLDA

20 IEEE Communications Magazine September 2011

SECURING THE CLOUD: CLOUDCOMPUTER SECURITY TECHNIQUESAND TACTICSVIC (J.R.) WINKLER, SYNGRESS-ELSEVIERINC., 2011, ISBN 978-1-59749-592-9,SOFTCOVER, 290 PAGESREVIEWER: JERZY DOMZAL

Researchers and engineers workingon security issues, especially related tocloud environment, will find Winklersbook important. The author, a SeniorAssociate at Booz Allen Hamilton, isan expert with a broad range of exper-tise on security. He has worked for over30 years in InfoSec/cyber security, sys-tems and applications engineering, aswell as IT operations and management.This experience allowed him to presenta successful position on many differentaspects of security in clouds.

A wide spectrum of cloud computingis dealt with: the author describes howcloud computing may be used and alsoelaborates on its potential weaknesses.He shows the ways in which data maybe lost or stolen and gives guidelines onsecurity in different deployments or ser-vice models.

The work is organized in ten chap-ters. It leads a reader from an introduc-tion to basic ideas of cloud computing,through the description of the mainsecurity strategies and practices, to theconclusions with an examination ofunderstanding of the provided securityoperations and solutions.

Chapters 1 and 2 present advantagesof cloud computing as well as somesecurity limitations. The author provesthat this new computing paradigm isboth cost-effective and easy in use. Hedescribes not only the security basics,but also covers the ideas of cloud com-puting which are essential for under-standing the remaining chapters. Theservice models of cloud computing(SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS) and the clouddelivery models (public, private, hybrid,and community) are given in detail. InChapter 3, the security concerns aredeeply analyzed. The author focuses onrisk issues and presents a brief analysisof legal and regulatory aspects for dif-ferent types of clouds. This chapter isless technical, yet very important forthe rest of the book. Chapter 4 analyzespossible architectures for cloud com-

puting and considers security require-ments. The author discusses a few rep-resentative cloud security architecturesand draws conclusions about how toidentify security problems. Moreover,he identifies some security patterns andsolutions for ensuring better security,and he proposes some cost-effectivedesign strategies for cloud computing.Chapter 5 is devoted to data securityissues. The author shows the weakness-es in data security and presents meth-ods to improve security. He analyzeswhat happens when data is stored in acloud and there is a need to change thestorage space. He indicates that datamay be at risk when it is transferred aswell as if it is improperly deleted by theprevious cloud administrator. The nextchapter summarizes best practices forcloud computing. The goal of thesepractices is to minimize the risk and tomanage security in a cloud in an effec-tive way. The author deals with theissues related to security controls andmonitoring of cloud computing. InChapters 7 and 8, the author analyzeshow to build an internal cloud or howto select an external cloud provider in amost effective way. The advantages anddisadvantages of both approaches areconsidered. The security aspects areanalyzed in detail and the benefits/risksare presented. The conclusions on howto select the best cloud service provideris one of the most valuable parts of thebook. Chapter 9 is devoted to the eval-uation of cloud computing security. Theauthor takes into account the criteriapresented in the previous chapters andextends the evaluation model with somenew tools. Chapter 10 focuses on deci-sions taken during a network setup andoperation which are related to security.Moreover, the security operations activ-ities are shown. The most important ofthem are the setups and updates of acloud server, ensuring resilience, back-up possibilities and business continuity,management of data and changes in anetwork.

Overall, Winklers book certainlyachieves its goal, that is to help onefacilitate the design, deployment andsecure using of a cloud. The work con-firms that even advanced issues may bepresented and explained in a transpar-ent and comprehensible way. Theauthor manages to guide a readerthrough all steps in cloud computing,from implementation or choice of a ser-vice provider to efficient protection of ausers data. This book is highly recom-mended to network engineers but mayalso be worth reading for anyone inter-ested in cloud computing.

LYT-BOOK REVIEWS-SEPTEMBER 8/22/11 12:31 PM Page 20

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