Sentana.Net – Journal

Securing Data in The Cloud January 14, 2010

I just found an interesting article about securing your data in the cloud. Now that cloud computing has gained quite a number of followers, it will be good to understand the additional necessary steps to ensure your confidential data are secured in a cloud computing environment.

The original article can be found here.

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Storing data in the cloud is arguably the most important aspect of public cloud resources, but it is rarely treated as such. Two practical steps to take when securing cloud data are:

• Protect your data in a real world environment.
• Meet compliance requirements.

What are the issues?
There are two primary issues that we have to deal with when talking about data security in a public cloud:

• Protection of the data: Dealing with the confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA) criteria. Answering the important questions, such as, “What is the risk to the data? Are the controls in place adequate to mitigate the risk?”
• Location of the data: Dealing with the physical location of the “bits” and answering questions like, “Do I know where the data resides? Does this violate any of my compliance requirements?”

Location is often doubly important because we do not think about it; it may easily slip by unnoticed and have significant impact if a data loss ever occurs.

An example is the conflict between the U.S. Patriot Act and Canadian laws on the privacy of certain personal information. The U.S. government says if there is a compelling reason, they are able to see data in their jurisdiction. Canadian laws say that the data of certain Canadian citizens is protected and cannot be disclosed. If you handle Canadian data (i.e., data that is protected), then you had better be sure it is not physically located on systems in the U.S. Note that this is something providers will need to ensure via contracts.

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Google Chrome on Ubuntu (well, sort of) November 17, 2009

Most of us already know that one of the fastest browser out there is Google Chrome. Sadly enough, Google Chrome is only available on Windows platform, while the Mac and Linux users are left to run Safari or Firefox. The good thing is that Google has listened to those requests and are currently developing the native version of Chrome to Mac and Linux.

But for those who can’t wait, there is a way to get Chromium (the open-source platform on which Google Chrome is based). Here are the steps (originally taken from here):

First you need to edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file:

     sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add add the following lines if you are using Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala):

     deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
     deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu karmic main

Save and exit the file.

Now add the GPG key using the following command:

     sudo apt-key adv –recv-keys –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xfbef0d696de1c72ba5a835fe5a9bf3bb4e5e17b5

Update the source list using the following command:

     sudo apt-get update

Then you can install chromium using the following command:

     sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

After a successful installation, you can open chromium from Applications—>Internet—>Chromium Web Browser:

Here’s a sample picture of what Chromium looks like on Ubuntu:

Alternatively, there’s a script created by Jeff Rader to automate the installation of Chromium. His script can be downloaded here. Do not forget to change the permission to executable before running the script.

Enjoy!

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