Cloud Computing
Security Considerations
Introduction
Cloud computing offers potential benefits including cost savings and improved business outcomes for organisations.
However, there are a variety of information security risks that need to be carefully considered. Risks will vary
depending on the sensitivity of the data to be stored or processed, and how the chosen cloud vendor (also referred to
as a cloud service provider) has implemented their specific cloud services.
This discussion paper assists organisations to perform a risk assessment to determine the viability of using cloud
computing services. This document provides an overview of cloud computing and associated benefits. Most
importantly, this document provides a list of thought provoking questions to help organisations understand the risks
that need to be considered when using cloud computing. Developing a risk assessment helps senior business
representatives make an informed decision as to whether cloud computing is currently suitable to meet their business
goals with an acceptable level of risk. The questions in this document address the following topics:
availability of data and business functionality
protecting data from unauthorised access
handling security incidents.
The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) strongly encourages both senior managers and technical staff to work
through this list of questions together. The questions are intended to provoke discussion and help organisations
identify and manage relevant information security risks associated with the evolving field of cloud computing. In
particular, the risk assessment needs to seriously consider the potential risks involved in handing over control of your
data to an external vendor. Risks may increase if the vendor operates offshore.
This document complements the advice on cloud computing in the Australian Government Information Security
Manual (ISM). The ACSC recommends against outsourcing information technology services and functions outside of
Australia, unless organisations are dealing with data that is all publicly available. The ACSC strongly encourages
organisations to choose either a locally owned vendor or a foreign owned vendor that is located in Australia and stores,
processes and manages sensitive data only within Australian borders. Note that foreign owned vendors operating in
Australia may be subject to foreign laws such as a foreign government’s lawful access to data held by the vendor.
Overview of cloud computing
Cloud computing as a delivery model for IT services is defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) as ‘a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing
resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with
minimal management effort or service provider interaction’ 1.
NIST specify five characteristics of cloud computing:
On-demand self-service involves customers using a web site or similar control panel interface to provision
computing resources such as additional computers, network bandwidth or user email accounts, without requiring
human interaction between customers and the vendor.
Broad network access enables customers to access computing resources over networks such as the Internet from
a broad range of computing devices such as laptops and smartphones.
Resource pooling involves vendors using shared computing resources to provide cloud services to multiple
customers. Virtualisation and multi-tenancy mechanisms are typically used to both segregate and protect each
customer and their data from other customers, and to make it appear to customers that they are the only user of
a shared computer or software application.
Rapid elasticity enables the fast and automatic increase and decrease to the amount of available computer
processing, storage and network bandwidth as required by customer demand.
Pay-per-use measured service involves customers only paying for the computing resources that they actually use,
and being able to monitor their usage. This is analogous to household use of utilities such as electricity.
There are three cloud service models. A non-exhaustive list of example vendor services is provided to help the reader
understand the cloud service models. Inclusion of an example vendor service does not imply the ACSC’s support of the
service.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) involves the vendor providing physical computer hardware including CPU
processing, memory, data storage and network connectivity. The vendor may share their hardware among
multiple customers referred to as ‘multiple tenants’ using virtualisation software. IaaS enables customers to run
operating systems and software applications of their choice. Typically the vendor controls and maintains the
physical computer hardware. Typically the customer controls and maintains the operating systems and software
applications. An example IaaS vendor service is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
Platform as a Service (PaaS) involves the vendor providing Infrastructure as a Service plus operating systems and
server applications such as web servers. PaaS enables customers to use the vendor’s cloud infrastructure to
deploy web applications and other software developed by the customer using programming languages supported
by the vendor. Typically the vendor controls and maintains the physical computer hardware, operating systems
and server applications. Typically the customer only controls and maintains the software applications developed
by the customer.
Software as a Service (SaaS) involves the vendor using their cloud infrastructure and cloud platforms to provide
customers with software applications. Example applications include email and an environment for users to
collaboratively develop and share files such as documents and spreadsheets. These end user applications are
typically accessed by users via a web browser, eliminating the need for the user to install or maintain additional
software. Typically the vendor controls and maintains the physical computer hardware, operating systems and
software applications. Typically the customer only controls and maintains limited application configuration
settings specific to users such as creating email address distribution lists. Example SaaS vendor services include
Salesforce.com Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Google Docs, Google Gmail and Microsoft Office 365.
A vendor adding the words ‘cloud’ or ‘as a Service’ to the names of their products and services does not automatically
mean that the vendor is selling cloud computing as per the NIST definition.
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https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/sp/800-145/final
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There are four cloud deployment models:
Public cloud involves an organisation using a vendor’s cloud infrastructure which is shared via the Internet with
many other organisations and other members of the public. This model has maximum potential cost efficiencies
due to economies of scale. However, this model has a variety of inherent security risks that need to be
considered.
Private cloud involves an organisation’s exclusive use of cloud infrastructure and services located at the
organisation’s premises or offsite, and managed by the organisation or a vendor. Compared to the public cloud
model, the private cloud model has reduced potential cost efficiencies. If the private cloud is properly
implemented and operated, it has reduced potential security concerns. A well architected private cloud properly
managed by a vendor provides many of the benefits of a public cloud, but with increased control over security. A
managed private cloud may enable enterprise customers to more easily negotiate suitable contracts with the
vendor, instead of being forced to accept the generic contracts designed for the consumer mass market that are
offered by some public cloud vendors.
Community cloud involves a private cloud that is shared by several organisations with similar security
requirements and a need to store or process data of similar sensitivity. This model attempts to obtain most of the
security benefits of a private cloud, and most of the economic benefits of a public cloud. An example community
cloud is the sharing of a private cloud by several departments of the same government.
Hybrid cloud involves a combination of cloud models. An example is using commodity resources from a public
cloud such as web servers to display non-sensitive data, which interacts with sensitive data stored or processed in
a private cloud.
Overview of business drivers to adopt cloud
computing
Cloud computing has the potential to help organisations leverage modern technologies such as computer virtualisation
and worldwide Internet connectivity. Some of the key business drivers are:
Pursuing new business opportunities, such as trialling new ideas to reach and interact with customers over the
Internet;
Reducing upfront costs of capital expenditure of computer equipment and related expenses such as a physical
data centre and support staff, while reducing the associated financial risk to the organisation by replacing upfront
costs with reasonably predictable operational expenditure, and only paying for the amount of computing
processing and data storage that is actually used;
Potentially reducing ongoing costs due to the use of infrastructure and technical specialists that are typically
shared among many customers to achieve economies of scale, however the cost of applying controls to help
address security risks especially associated with shared infrastructure may reduce the potential cost savings of
some types of cloud computing;
Potentially improving business continuity and the availability of computing infrastructure if users have
guaranteed available network connectivity, where the infrastructure can rapidly and flexibly scale to meet peaks
and troughs in usage demand, and with the computing infrastructure typically located in multiple physical
locations for improved disaster recovery; and,
Potentially reducing carbon footprint due to the more efficient use of computer hardware requiring less
electricity and less air conditioning.
There may be good business reasons to move publicly available data to the public cloud. If properly designed, a
vendor’s spare network bandwidth and spare computing capacity automatically helps to mitigate some types of
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distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Technologies such as ‘anycast’ and international Content Delivery Networks
(CDN) can help to mitigate DDoS attacks by geographically distributing the network traffic and computer processing
around the world. These technologies to improve the availability and business continuity of publicly available data are
prohibitively expensive for every organisation to build themselves, though are relatively inexpensive to rent from
vendors. Although the availability of an organisation’s web site may not be affected by a DDoS attack, the organisation
may have to pay for the computer processing and network bandwidth consumed by the DDoS attack.
Organisations using cloud computing to store or process publicly available data such as a public web site may not be
concerned about confidentiality. However, the organisation’s risk assessment should consider the availability and
integrity of the public data, including reputational and other damage if the organisation’s system is offline, or is
compromised and distributes misleading information or malicious content.
To enable an organisation to focus on their core business, the acquisition and maintenance of specialist IT staff,
computing software and hardware used to store and process data can be outsourced to a vendor. However, the
organisation is still ultimately responsible for the protection of their data.
Risk management
A risk management process must be used to balance the benefits of cloud computing with the security risks associated
with the organisation handing over control to a vendor. A risk assessment should consider whether the organisation is
willing to trust their reputation, business continuity, and data to a vendor that may insecurely transmit, store and
process the organisation’s data.
The contract between a vendor and their customer must address mitigations to governance and security risks, and
cover who has access to the customer’s data and the security measures used to protect the customer’s data. Vendor’s
responses to important security considerations must be captured in the Service Level Agreement or other contract,
otherwise the customer only has vendor promises and marketing claims that can be hard to verify and may be
unenforceable.
In some cases it may be impractical or impossible for a customer to personally verify whether the vendor is adhering to
the contract, requiring the customer to rely on third party audits including certifications instead of simply putting blind
faith in the vendor. Customers should consider which of the vendor’s certifications are useful and relevant, how much
the certification increases the customer’s confidence in the vendor, what associated documents the customer can
request from the vendor, and whether the contents of the documents are of high quality. For example, Statement on
Auditing Standards (SAS) 70 Type II, superseded by a new standard in 2011, can involve the vendor deciding which
aspects of their business are to be covered, and an independent accountant checking only these aspects. Therefore,
customers should ask vendors exactly what aspects are covered. For vendors advertising ISO/IEC 27001 compliance,
customers should ask to review a copy of the Statement of Applicability, a copy of the latest external auditor’s report,
and the results of recent internal audits.
Overview of cloud computing security
considerations
This section provides a non-exhaustive list of cloud computing security considerations, with each security consideration
discussed in more detailed later in this document.
Not meeting any of the following security considerations does not necessarily mean that cloud computing cannot be
used, it simply means that the security consideration requires additional contemplation to determine if the associated
risk is acceptable.
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Maintaining availability and business functionality
My data or functionality to be moved to the cloud is not business critical.
I have reviewed the vendor’s business continuity and disaster recovery plan.
I will maintain an up to date backup copy of my data.
My data or business functionality will be replicated with a second vendor.
The network connection between me and the vendor’s network is adequate.
The Service Level Agreement (SLA) guarantees adequate system availability.
Scheduled outages are acceptable both in duration and time of day.
Scheduled outages affect the guaranteed percentage of system availability.
I would receive adequate compensation for a breach of the SLA or contract.
Redundancy mechanisms and offsite backups prevent data corruption or loss.
If I accidentally delete a file or other data, the vendor can quickly restore it.
I can increase my use of the vendor’s computing resources at short notice.
I can easily move my data to another vendor or inhouse.
I can easily move my standardised application to another vendor or inhouse.
Protecting data from unauthorised access by a third party
My choice of cloud sharing model aligns with my risk tolerance.
My data is not too sensitive to store or process in the cloud.
I can meet the legislative obligations to protect and manage my data.
I know and accept the privacy laws of countries that have access to my data.
Strong encryption approved by the ACSC protects my sensitive data at all times.
The vendor suitably sanitises storage media storing my data at its end of life.
The vendor securely monitors the computers that store or process my data.
I can use my existing tools to monitor my use of the vendor’s services.
I retain legal ownership of my data.
The vendor has a secure gateway environment.
The vendor’s gateway is certified by an authoritative third party.
The vendor provides a suitable email content filtering capability.
The vendor’s security posture is supported by policies and processes.
The vendor’s security posture is supported by direct technical controls.
I can audit the vendor’s security or access reputable third party audit reports.
The vendor supports the identity and access management system that I use.
Users access and store sensitive data only via trusted operating environments.
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The vendor uses endorsed physical security products and devices.
The vendor’s procurement process for software and hardware is trustworthy.
Protecting data from unauthorised access by the vendor’s customers
The vendor adequately separates me and my data from other customers.
Using the vendor’s cloud does not weaken my network security posture.
I have the option of using computers that are dedicated to my exclusive use.
When I delete my data, the storage media is sanitised before being reused.
Protecting data from unauthorised access by rogue vendor employees
The vendor does not know the password or key used to decrypt my data.
The vendor performs appropriate personnel vetting and employment checks.
Actions performed by the vendor’s employees are logged and reviewed.
Visitors to the vendor’s data centres are positively identified and escorted.
Vendor data centres have cable management practices to identify tampering.
Vendor security considerations apply equally to the vendor’s subcontractors.
Handling security incidents
The vendor is contactable and provides timely responses and support.
I have reviewed the vendor’s security incident response plan.
The vendor’s employees are trained to detect and handle security incidents.
The vendor will notify me of security incidents.
The vendor will assist me with security investigations and legal discovery.
I can access audit logs and other evidence to perform a forensic investigation.
I receive adequate compensation for a security breach caused by the vendor.
Storage media storing sensitive data can be adequately sanitised.
Detailed cloud computing security considerations
This section provides a detailed list of security considerations that organisations can discuss both internally and with
vendors that are transparent about their security measures. Some examples are provided to demonstrate that the
security considerations are not theoretical. Questions are provided to provoke thought and discussion, rather than to
be used simply as a checklist. Answers to these questions will assist organisations to develop a risk assessment and
make an informed decision regarding whether the organisation’s proposed use of cloud computing has an acceptable
level of risk. It is unlikely that any single vendor will provide suitable answers to all of the questions, so organisations
should decide which questions are most relevant based on the organisation’s intended use of cloud computing.
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Maintaining availability and business functionality
Answers to the following questions can reveal mitigations to help manage the risk of business functionality being
negatively impacted by the vendor’s cloud services becoming unavailable:
Business criticality of data or functionality. Am I moving business critical data or functionality to the cloud?
Vendor’s business continuity and disaster recovery plan. Can I thoroughly review a copy of the vendor’s business
continuity and disaster recovery plan that covers the availability and restoration of both my data and the vendor’s
services that I use? How much time does it take for my data and the services that I use to be recovered after a
disaster, and do the vendor’s other customers that are larger and pay more money than me get prioritisation?
My data backup plan. Will I spend additional money to maintain an up to date backup copy of my data located
either at my organisation’s premises, or stored with a second vendor that has no common points of failure with
the first vendor?
My business continuity and disaster recovery plan. Will I spend additional money to replicate my data or
business functionality with a second vendor that uses a different data centre and ideally has no common points of
failure with the first vendor? This replication should preferably be configured to automatically ‘failover’, so that if
one vendor’s services become unavailable, control is automatically and smoothly transitioned to the other
vendor.
My network connectivity to the cloud. Is the network connectivity between my organisation’s users and the
vendor’s network adequate in terms of availability, traffic throughput (bandwidth), delays (latency) and packet
loss?
Vendor’s guarantee of availability. Does the Service Level Agreement (SLA) guarantee that the vendor will
provide adequate system availability and quality of service, using their robust system architecture and business
processes? Availability may be affected by technical issues such as computer and network performance and
latency, hardware failures and faulty vendor software. Availability may also be affected by deliberate attacks such
as denial of service attacks against me or other customers of the vendor that still affects me. Finally, availability
may also be affected by configuration mistakes made by the vendor including those resulting from poor software
version control and poor change management processes.
Impact of outages. Can I tolerate the maximum possible downtime of the SLA? Are the scheduled outage
windows acceptable both in duration and time of day, or will scheduled outages interfere with my critical business
processes? Typical SLAs that guarantee 99.9% availability can have up to nine hours of unscheduled outages every
year without breaching the SLA.
SLA inclusion of scheduled outages. Does the SLA guaranteed availability percentage include scheduled outages?
If not, the vendor may have numerous long scheduled outages, including emergency scheduled outages with little
or no notice to customers, that do not result in a breach of the SLA. Vendors with distributed and redundant
computing and network infrastructure enable scheduled maintenance to be applied in batches while customers
are seamlessly transitioned to computing and network infrastructure that is still available and not part of the
outage.
SLA compensation. Does the SLA adequately reflect the actual damage caused by a breach of the SLA such as
unscheduled downtime or data loss? For example, most generic SLAs designed for the consumer mass market
typically involve inadequate compensation such as a few hours of free service, or a credit, partial refund or other
small discount on the monthly bill. The damage done to an organisation’s reputation is not repaired by receiving a
token amount of free service or refunded money. For example, in February 2011 a major vendor accidentally
deleted thousands of files belonging to a paying customer, admitted negligence, initially stated that the files were
not retrievable, and offered free service worth approximately $100 as compensation. This example also
highlighted deficiencies in staff training, business processes and backup implementation.
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Data integrity and availability. How does the vendor implement mechanisms such as redundancy and offsite
backups to prevent corruption or loss of my data, and guarantee both the integrity and the availability of my
data? For example, in February 2011 a major vendor of email Software as a Service began deploying a software
update that unexpectedly deleted all of the email belonging to tens of thousands of customers. This problem
affected data in the vendor’s multiple data centres, highlighting the importance of having offline backups in
addition to redundant data centres.
Data restoration. If I accidentally delete a file, email or other data, how much time does it take for my data to be
partially or fully restored from backup, and is the maximum acceptable time captured in the SLA?
Scalability. How much available spare computing resources does the vendor provide to enable my usage of the
vendor’s services to scale at short notice?
Changing vendor. If I want to move my data to my organisation or to a different vendor, or if the vendor suddenly
becomes bankrupt or otherwise quits the cloud business, how do I get access to my data in a vendor-neutral
format to avoid vendor lock-in? How cooperative will the vendor be? How do I ensure that my data is
permanently deleted from the vendor’s storage media? For Platform as a Service, which standards does the
vendor use that facilitate portability and interoperability to easily move my application to a different vendor or to
my organisation?
Protecting data from unauthorised access by a third party
Answers to the following questions can reveal mitigations to help manage the risk of unauthorised access to data by a
third party:
Choice of cloud deployment model. Am I considering using a potentially less secure public cloud, a potentially
more secure hybrid cloud or community cloud, or a potentially most secure private cloud?
Sensitivity of my data. Is my data to be stored or processed in the cloud classified, sensitive, private, or data that
is publicly available such as information from my public web site? Does the aggregation of my data make it more
sensitive than any individual piece of data? For example, the sensitivity may increase if storing a significant
amount of data, or storing a variety of data that if compromised would facilitate identity theft. If there is a data
compromise, could I demonstrate my due diligence to senior management, government officials and the public?
Legislative obligations. What obligations do I have to protect and manage my data under various legislation, for
example the Privacy Act, the Archives Act, as well as other legislation specific to the type of data? Will the vendor
contractually accept adhering to these obligations to help me ensure that the obligations are met to the
satisfaction of the Australian Government?
Countries with access to my data. In which countries is my data stored, backed up and processed? Which foreign
countries does my data transit? In which countries is the failover or redundant data centres? Will the vendor
notify me if the answers to these questions change? Data stored in, processed in, or transiting foreign countries
may be subject to their laws. Such laws range from Freedom of Information requests by members of the public,
through to government lawful access mechanisms. For example, a foreign owned vendor may be subject to their
country’s laws even if the vendor is operating within Australia. If the vendor is subpoenaed by a foreign law
enforcement organisation for access to data belonging to the vendor’s customers, the vendor may be legally
prohibited from notifying their customers of the subpoena.
Data encryption technologies. Are hash algorithms, encryption algorithms and key lengths deemed appropriate
by the ISM used to protect my data when it is in transit over a network, and stored on both the vendor’s
computers and on backup media? The ability to encrypt data while it is being processed by the vendor’s
computers is still an emerging technology and is an area of current research by industry and academia. Is the
encryption deemed strong enough to protect my data for the duration of time that my data is sensitive? For
example, cloud computing processing power has already been used to significantly reduce the time and cost of
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using brute force techniques to crack and recover relatively weak passwords either stored as SHA1 hashes or used
as Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) pre-shared keys.
Media sanitisation. What processes are used to sanitise the storage media storing my data at its end of life, and
are the processes deemed appropriate by the ISM?
Vendor’s remote monitoring and management. Does the vendor monitor, administer or manage the computers
that store or process my data? If yes, is this performed remotely from foreign countries or from Australia? Can the
vendor provide patch compliance reports and other details about the security of workstations used to perform
this work, and what controls prevent the vendor’s employees from using untrustworthy personally owned
laptops?
My monitoring and management. Can I use my existing tools for integrity checking, compliance checking, security
monitoring and network management, to obtain visibility of all my systems regardless of whether these systems
are located locally or in the cloud? Do I have to learn to use additional tools provided by the vendor? Does the
vendor even provide such a mechanism for me to perform monitoring?
Data ownership. Do I retain legal ownership of my data, or does it belong to the vendor and may be considered
an asset for sale by liquidators if the vendor declares bankruptcy?
Gateway technologies. What technologies does the vendor use to create a secure gateway environment?
Examples include firewalls, traffic flow filters, content filters, antivirus software and data diodes where
appropriate.
Gateway certification. Is the vendor’s gateway environment certified against government security standards and
regulations? For example, several major vendors in Australia use gateways certified by the ACSC for data classified
up to PROTECTED.
Email content filtering. For email Software as a Service, does the vendor provide customisable email content
filtering that can enforce my organisation’s email content policy? For example, an organisation may have a
‘blacklist’ email policy of ‘No executable email attachments allowed’ or better yet a ‘whitelist’ policy of what is
allowed (such as .doc .pdf .ppt .xls .jpg and .zip files containing the previously mentioned file types) and
everything else is blocked by default. Spam filtering is not necessarily email content filtering, since unsolicited
commercial spam email is not inherently malicious, and affects employee productivity instead of the security of
the organisation’s computer network.
Policies and processes supporting the vendor’s IT security posture. Can I have details of how the vendor’s
computer and network security posture is supported by policies and processes including threat and risk
assessments, ongoing vulnerability management, a change management process that incorporates security,
penetration testing, logging and regular log analysis, use of security products endorsed by the Australian
Government, and compliance with Australian government security standards and regulations?
Technologies supporting the vendor’s IT security posture. Can I have details of how the vendor’s computer and
network security posture is supported by direct technical controls including timely application of security patches,
regularly updated antivirus software, defence in depth mechanisms to protect against unknown vulnerabilities,
hardened operating systems and software applications configured with the strongest possible security settings,
intrusion detection and prevention systems, and data loss prevention mechanisms?
Auditing the vendor’s IT security posture. Can I audit the vendor’s implementation of security measures,
including performing scans and other penetration testing of the environment provided to me? If there is a
justifiable reason why auditing is not possible, which reputable third party has performed audits and other
vulnerability assessments? What sort of internal audits does the vendor perform, and which compliance
standards and other recommended practices from organisations such as the Cloud Security Alliance are used for
these assessments? Can I thoroughly review a copy of recent resulting reports? For example, a major vendor in
Australia advertises that it uses ‘ISO 27001 accredited data centres which can be audited by you and your
regulators’.
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User authentication. What identity and access management systems does the vendor support for users to log in
to use Software as a Service? Examples include two factor authentication, synchronisation with the organisation’s
Active Directory and other federated single sign-on.
Centralised control of data. What user training, policies and technical controls prevent my organisation’s users
from using unapproved or insecure computing devices without a trusted operating environment to store or
process sensitive data accessed using Software as a Service?
Vendor’s physical security posture. Does the vendor use physical security products and devices that are endorsed
by the Australian Government? How is the vendor’s physical data centre designed to prevent the tampering or
theft of servers, infrastructure and the data stored thereon? Is the vendor’s physical data centre accredited by an
authoritative third party? For example, several major vendors in Australia advertise using data centres accredited
by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation T4 Protective Security Section.
Software and hardware procurement. What procurement process is used to ensure that cloud infrastructure
software and hardware has been supplied by a legitimate source and has not been maliciously modified in transit?
Protecting data from unauthorised access by the vendor’s customers
Answers to the following questions can reveal mitigations to help manage the risk of unauthorised access to data by the
vendor’s other customers:
Customer segregation. What assurance do I have that the virtualisation and ‘multi-tenancy’ mechanisms
guarantee adequate logical and network segregation between multiple tenants, so that a malicious customer
using the same physical computer as me cannot access my data? For Infrastructure as a Service, the virtualisation
software used to share hardware and provide each customer with their own operating system environment was
typically not originally designed to provide segregation for security purposes. However, the developers of such
virtualisation software are increasingly focusing their efforts on making their software more suitable for this
purpose. What controls are in place to detect and prevent a tenant exploiting a publicly unknown or unpatched
vulnerability in a hypervisor? For Software as a Service, the logical separation between customers is usually less
well defined, and in some cases the separation mechanism may be retrofitted to an existing software application
such as email server or database software. For example, in December 2010 a major vendor of Software as a
Service admitted that a configuration mistake caused a security breach that resulted in the exposure of ‘offline’
email address books belonging to customers, and confirmed there was unauthorised access by the vendor’s other
customers.
Weakening my security posture. How would using the vendor’s cloud infrastructure weaken my organisation’s
existing network security posture? Would the vendor advertise me as one of their customers without my explicit
consent, thereby assisting an adversary that is specifically targeting me? For example, an adversary could use
cloud infrastructure from the same vendor used by the target organisation, to both serve malicious web content
to the organisation’s users, and to exfiltrate the organisation’s sensitive data. This may enable an adversary to
circumvent the organisation’s use of security technologies such as whitelisting which domains and IP address
ranges can be accessed, and which web sites can run active content such as javascript in the web browser.
Dedicated servers. Do I have some control over which physical computer runs my virtual machines? Can I pay
extra to ensure that no other customer can use the same physical computer as me e.g. dedicated servers or
virtual private cloud?
Media sanitisation. When I delete portions of my data, what processes are used to sanitise the storage media
before it is made available to another customer, and are the processes deemed appropriate by the ISM? For
example, a vendor advertises that when a customer deletes data, ‘the physical space on which the data was
stored is zeroed over before the space is re-used by other data’.
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Protecting data from unauthorised access by rogue vendor employees
Answers to the following questions can reveal mitigations to help manage the risk of unauthorised access to data by
rogue vendor employees:
Data encryption key management. Does the vendor know the password or key used to decrypt my data, or do I
encrypt and decrypt the data on my computer so the vendor only ever has encrypted data?
Vetting of vendor’s employees. What personnel employment checks and vetting processes does the vendor
perform to ensure that employees are trustworthy? Examples include thorough police background checks, as well
as citizenship checks, security clearances and psychological assessments especially for employees with
administrative privileges or other access to customer data. For example, in September 2010 a major vendor
acknowledged sacking an employee for allegedly deliberately violating the privacy of users by inappropriately
reading their electronic communications during a timeframe of several months.
Auditing vendor’s employees. What robust identity and access management system do the vendor’s employees
use? What auditing process is used to log and review the actions performed by the vendor’s employees?
Visitors to data centre. Are visitors to data centres escorted at all times, and is the name and other personal
details of every visitor verified and recorded?
Physical tampering by vendor’s employees. Is network cabling professionally installed to Australian standards or
internationally acceptable standards, to help avoid the vendor’s employees from accidentally connecting cables to
the wrong computers, and to help readily highlight any deliberate attempts by the vendor’s employees to tamper
with the cabling?
Vendor’s subcontractors. Do the answers to these questions apply equally to all of the vendor’s subcontractors?
Handling security incidents
Answers to the following questions can reveal a vendor’s ability to handle security incidents:
Timely vendor support. Is the vendor readily contactable and responsive to requests for support, and is the
maximum acceptable response time captured in the SLA or simply a marketing claim that the vendor will try their
best? Is the support provided locally, or from a foreign country, or from several foreign countries using an
approach that follows the sun? What mechanism does the vendor use to obtain a real-time understanding of the
security posture of my use of the vendor’s services so that the vendor can provide support?
Vendor’s incident response plan. Does the vendor have a security incident response plan that specifies how to
detect and respond to security incidents, in a way that is similar to incident handling procedures detailed in the
ISM? Can I thoroughly review a copy?
Training of vendor’s employees. What qualifications, certifications and regular information security awareness
training do the vendor’s employees require, to know how to use the vendor’s systems in a secure manner and to
identify potential security incidents?
Notification of security incidents. Will the vendor notify me via secure communications of security incidents that
are more serious than an agreed threshold, especially in cases where the vendor might be liable? Will the vendor
automatically notify law enforcement or other authorities, who may confiscate computing equipment used to
store or process my data?
Extent of vendor support. How much assistance will the vendor provide me with investigations if there is a
security breach such as an unauthorised disclosure of my data, or if there is a need to perform legal electronic
discovery of evidence?
My access to logs. How do I obtain access to time synchronised audit logs and other logs to perform a forensic
investigation, and how are the logs created and stored to be suitable evidence for a court of law?
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Security incident compensation. How will the vendor adequately compensate me if the vendor’s actions, faulty
software or hardware contributed to a security breach?
Data spills. If data that I consider is too sensitive to be stored in the cloud is accidentally placed into the cloud,
referred to as a data spill, how can the spilled data be deleted using forensic sanitisation techniques? Is the
relevant portion of physical storage media zeroed whenever data is deleted? If not, how long does it take for
deleted data to be overwritten by customers as part of normal operation, noting that clouds typically have
significant spare unused storage capacity? Can the spilled data be forensically deleted from the vendor’s backup
media? Where else is the spilled data stored, and can it be forensically deleted?
Further information
The Australian Commonwealth accepts no liability for the content on external third party web sites that contain
additional information:
Australian Cyber Security Centre, Australian Government Information Security Manual,
https://www.acsc.gov.au/infosec/ism
Attorney-General’s Department, Protective Security Policy Framework, https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au
National Institute of Standards and Technology, Cloud Computing, https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/cloudcomputing
European Network and Information Security Agency, Cloud Computing Security Risk Assessment,
https://www.enisa.europa.eu/publications/cloud-computing-risk-assessment
European Network and Information Security Agency, Security and Resilience in Governmental Clouds,
https://www.enisa.europa.eu/publications/security-and-resilience-in-governmental-clouds
Cloud Security Alliance, CSA Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing v4.0 ,
https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/guidance/
Cloud Security Alliance, Top Threats Working Group, https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/group/top-threats/
Cloud Security Alliance, Research, https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/research/
Delimiter, The Australian private cloud: Who Sells It?, https://delimiter.com.au/2010/10/26/the-australianprivate-cloud-who-sells-it
CloudHarmony, Cloud Speed Test, https://www.cloudharmony.com/speedtest
Web Hosting Talk, https://www.webhostingtalk.com.
Contact details
Organisations or individuals with questions regarding this advice can contact the ACSC by emailing
asd.assist@defence.gov.au or calling 1300 CYBER1 (1300 292 371).
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