Network Technology

The February 2011 Federal Cloud Computing Strategy released by the U.S. Chief Information Officer reinforces the United States Government’s plans to move information technology away from traditional workstations and toward cloud computing environments. Where compelling incentives to do this exist, security implications of concentrating sensitive data and computation into computing clouds have yet to be fully addressed. The perimeter defense focus of traditional security solutions is not sufficient to secure existing enclaves. It could be further marginalized in cloud environments where there is a huge concentration of homogeneous hosts on high-speed networks without internal checks, and with implicit trust among hosts within those limited perimeter defenses.