Never a Cloudy day in DC? Not if the NIST has anything to say about it... "DRAFT Cloud Computing Synopsis and Recommendations"

Catalyst - NIST Issues Draft Recommendations on Cloud Computing

"Earlier this month, the Computer Security Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issued draft recommendations on cloud computing (PDF). As many of you know, NIST is an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Founded in 1901, the agency was the nation’s first physical science research laboratory.

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What is Cloud Computing?

In the 84-page draft, Cloud Computing Synopsis and Recommendations, published May 12, the NIST team set out to write a primer on the cloud—types, deployment models, service models, cloud security and, ultimately, the benefits of cloud computing. They start with NIST’s definition of cloud computing, which is tricky because:

Cloud computing is not a single kind of system, but instead spans a spectrum of underlying technologies, configuration possibilities, service models, and deployment models.

Thus, while the term “cloud” is often used as a synonym for the Internet, cloud computing means more than simply the transmission of data over the Internet.

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Why Read the Guidelines

If you are considering the cloud for any of your applications, this is a helpful document. The authors discuss operational characteristics, standards for service-level agreements and security considerations. Ultimately, they talk about the benefits of cloud computing and why organizations like law firms and corporations businesses might consider it.

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National Institute of Standards and Technology - Cloud Computing Synopsis and Recommendations

Executive Summary

Cloud computing allows computer users to conveniently rent access to fully featured applications, to software development and deployment environments, and to computing infrastructure assets such as network-accessible data storage and processing.

This document reviews the NIST-established definition of cloud computing, describes cloud computing benefits and open issues, presents an overview of major classes of cloud technology, and provides guidelines and recommendations on how organizations should consider the relative opportunities and risks of cloud computing. Cloud computing has been the subject of a great deal of commentary. Attempts to describe cloud computing in general terms, however, have been problematic because cloud computing is not a single kind of system, but instead spans a spectrum of underlying technologies, configuration possibilities, service models, and deployment models. This document describes cloud systems and discusses their strengths and weaknesses.

Depending on an organization's requirements, different technologies and configurations are appropriate. To understand which part of the spectrum of cloud systems is most appropriate for a given need, an organization should consider how clouds can be deployed (deployment models), what kinds of services can be provided to customers (service models), the economic opportunities and risks of using cloud services (economic considerations), the technical characteristics of cloud services such as performance and reliability (operational characteristics), typical terms of service (service level agreements), and the security opportunities and risks (security).

Deployment Models. A cloud computing system may be deployed privately or hosted on the premises of a cloud customer, may be shared among a limited number of trusted partners, may be hosted by a third party, or may be a publically accessible service, i.e., a public cloud. Depending on the kind of cloud deployment, the cloud may have limited private computing resources, or may have access to large quantities of remotely accessed resources. The different deployment models present a number of tradeoffs in how customers can control their resources, and the scale, cost, and availability of resources.

Service Models. A cloud can provide access to software applications such as email or office productivity tools (the Software as a Service, or SaaS, service model), or can provide a toolkit for customers to use to build and operate their own software (the Platform as a Service, or PaaS, service model), or can provide network access to traditional computing resources such as processing power and storage (the Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS, service model). The different service models have different strengths and are suitable for different customers and business objectives. Generally, interoperability and portability of customer workloads is more achievable in the IaaS service model because the building blocks of IaaS offerings are relatively well-defined, e.g., network protocols, CPU instruction sets, legacy
device interfaces.

Economic Considerations. In outsourced and public deployment models, cloud computing provides convenient rental of computing resources: users pay service charges while using a service but need not pay large up-front acquisition costs to build a computing infrastructure. The reduction of up-front costs reduces the risks for pilot projects and experimental efforts, thus reducing a barrier to organizational flexibility, or agility. In outsourced and public deployment models, cloud computing also can provide elasticity, that is, the ability for customers to quickly request, receive, and later release as many resources as needed. By using an elastic cloud, customers may be able to avoid excessive costs from overprovisioning, i.e., building enough capacity for peak demand and then not using the capacity in non-peak periods. Whether or not cloud computing reduces overall costs for an organization depends on a careful analysis of all the costs of operation, compliance, and security, including costs to migrate to and, if necessary, migrate from a cloud.

Operational Characteristics. Cloud computing favors applications that can be broken up into small independent parts. Cloud systems generally depend on networking and hence any limitations on networking, such as data import/export bottlenecks or service disruptions, reduce cloud utility, especially for applications that are not tolerant of disruptions.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Organizations should understand the terms of the SLA, their responsibilities, and those of the service provider, before using a cloud service. Security. Organizations should be aware of the security issues that exist in cloud computing and of applicable NIST publications such as NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-53. As complex networked systems, clouds are affected by traditional computer and network security issues such as the needs to provide data confidentiality, data integrity, and system availability. By imposing uniform management practices, clouds may be able to improve on some security update and response issues. Clouds, however, also have potential to aggregate an unprecedented quantity and variety of customer data in cloud data centers. This potential vulnerability requires a high degree of confidence and transparency that cloud providers can keep customer data isolated and protected. Also, cloud users and administrators rely heavily on Web browsers, so browser security failures can lead to cloud security breaches. The privacy and security of cloud computing depend primarily on whether the cloud service provider has implemented robust security controls and a sound privacy policy desired by their customers, the visibility that customers have into its performance, and how well it is managed. Inherently, the move to cloud computing is a business decision in which the business case should consider the relevant factors some of which include readiness of existing applications for cloud deployment, transition costs and life-cycle costs, maturity of service

I know you all know what the "cloud" is, its different aspects, etc. So why am I still blogging about it? Because this guide from the NIST may be something we can use to explain it to others. To share with co-workers, superiors, senior management, etc. who may just now be thinking about "cloud" (and maybe thinking, "oh we run stuff on 'servers' and connect to them over the 'internet' so we're already 'cloud'..." sigh...)

And look, our tax dollars have already been spent on this draft, we might as well leverage where we can...