Rational Survivability

Today at VMworld I spent my day in and out of sessions focused on the security of virtualized and cloud environments.

Many of these security sessions hinged on the release of VMware‘s new and improved suite of vShield product offerings which can be simply summarized by a deceptively simple set of descriptions:

• vShield Edge – Think perimeter firewalling for the virtual datacenter (L3 and above)
• vShield App – Think internal segmentation and zoning (L2)
• vShield Endpoint – Anti-malware service offload

The promised capabilities of these solutions offer quite a well-rounded set of capabilities from a network and security perspective but there are many interesting things to consider as one looks at the melding of the VMsafe API, vShield Zones and the nepotistic relationship enjoyed between the vCloud (nee’ VMware vCloud Director) and vSphere platforms.

There are a series of capabilities emerging which seek to solve many of the constraints associated with multi-tenancy and scale challenges of heavily virtualized enterprise and service provider virtual data center environments.  However, many of the issues associated with those I raised in the Four Horsemen of the Virtualization Security Apocalypse still stand (performance, resilience/scale, management and cost) — especially since many of these features are delivered in the form of a virtual appliance.

Many of the issues I raise above (and asked again today in session) don’t have satisfactory answers which just shows you how immature we still are in our solution portfolios.

I’ll be diving deeper into each of the components as the week proceeds (and more details around vCloud Director are made available,) but one thing is certain — there’s a very interesting amplification of the existing tug-of-war  between the security capabilities/functionality provided by the virtualization/cloud platform providers and the network/security ecosystem trying to find relevance and alignment with them.

There is going to be a wringing out of the last few smaller virtualization/Cloud security players who have not yet been consolidated via M&A or attrition (Altor Networks, Catbird, HyTrust, Reflex, etc) as the three technologies above either further highlight an identified gap or demonstrate irrelevance in the face of capabilities “built-in” (even if you have to pay for them) by VMware themselves.

Further, the uneasy tension between  the classical physical networking vendors and the virtualization/cloud platform providers is going to come to a boil, especially as it comes to configuration management, compliance, and reporting as the differentiators between simple integration at the API level of control and data plane capabilities and things like virtual firewalling (and AV, and overlay VPNs and policy zoning) begins to commoditize.

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s not where the network *is* in a virtualized environment, it’s where it *isn’t* — the definition of where the network starts and stops is getting more and more abstracted.   This in turn drives the same conversation as it relates to security.  How we’re going to define, provision, orchestrate, and govern these virtual data centers concerns me greatly as there are so many touchpoints.

Hopefully this starts to get a little more clear as more and more of the infrastructure (virtual and physical) become manageable via API such that ultimately you won’t care WHAT tool is used to manage networking/security or even HOW other than the fact that policy can be defined consistently and implemented/instantiated via API across all levels transparently, regardless of what’s powering the moving parts.

This goes back to the discussions (video) I had with Simon Crosby on who should own security in virtualized environments and why (blog).

Now all this near term confusion and mess isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it’s going to force further investment, innovation and focus on problem solving that’s simply been stalled in the absence of both technology readiness, customer appetite and compliance alignment.

More later this week. [Ed: You can find the follow-on to this post here “VMware’s (New) vShield: The (Almost) Bottom Line]

/Hoff

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I was struck with a sense of disappointment as I read Bob Wardspan’s (Smoothspan) blog today “NASA Fiddles While Rome Is Burning.”  So as Bob was rubbed the wrong way by Alex Howard’s post (below,) so too was I by Bob’s perspective.  All’s fair in love and space, I suppose.

In what amounts to a scathing indictment of new areas of innovation and research, he laments the passing of the glory day’s of NASA’s race to space, bemoans the lack of focus on planet-hopping, and chastises the organization for what he suggests is their dabbling in spaces they don’t belong:

Now along comes today’s NASA, trying to get a little PR glory from IT technology others are working on.  Yeah, we get to hear Vinton Cerf talk about the prospects for building an Internet in space.  Nobody will be there to try to connect their iGadget to it, because NASA can barely get there anymore, but we’re going to talk it up.  We get Lewis Shepherd telling us, “Government has the ability to recognize long time lines, and then make long term investment decisions on funding of basic science.”  Yeah, we can see that based on NASA’s bright future, Lewis.

Bob’s upset about NASA (and our Nation’s lost focus on space exploration.  So am I.  However, he’s barking up the wrong constellation.  Sure, the diversity of different technologies mentioned in Alex Howard’s blog on the NASA IT Summit are wide and far, but NASA has always been about innovating in areas well beyond the engineering of solid rocket boosters…

Let’s look at Cloud Computing — one of those things that you wouldn’t necessarily equate with NASA’s focus.  Now you may disagree with their choices, but the fact that they’re making them is what is important to me.  They are, in many cases, driving discussion, innovation and development.  It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but then again, neither is a Saturn V.

NASA didn’t choose to cut space exploration and instead divert all available resources and monies toward improving the efficiency and access to computing resources and reducing their cost to researchers.  This was set in motion years ago and was compounded by the global economic meltdown.

The very reasons the CIO’s (Chief Information Officers) — the people responsible for IT-related mission support — are working diligently on new computing platforms like Nebula is in many ways a direct response to the very cause of this space travel deficit — budget cuts.  They, like everyone else, are trying to do more with less, quicker, better and cheaper.

The timing is right, the technology is here and it’s an appropriate response.  What would you have NASA IT do, Bob? Go on strike until a Saturn V blasts off?  The privatization of space exploration will breed all new sets of public-private partnership integration and information collaboration challenges.  These new platforms will enable that new step forward when it comes.

The fact that the IT divisions of NASA (whose job it is to deliver services just like this) are innovating simply shines a light on the fact that for their needs, the IT industry is simply too slow.  NASA must deal with enormous amounts of data, transitive use, hugely collaborative environments across multiple organizations, agencies, research organizations and countries.

Regardless of how you express your disappointment with NASA’s charter and budget, it’s unfortunate that Bob chose to suggest that this is about “…trying to get a little PR glory from IT technology others are working on” since in many cases NASA has led the charge and made advancements and innovated where others are just starting.  Have you met Linda Cureton or Chris Kemp from NASA?  They’re not exactly glory hunters.  They are conscientious, smart, dedicated and driven public servants, far from the picture you paint.

In my view, NASA IT (which is conflated as simply “NASA”) is doing what they should — making excellent use of taxpayer dollars and their budget to deliver services which ultimately support new efforts as well as the very classically-themed remaining missions they are chartered to deliver:

• To improve life here,
• To extend life to there,
• To find life beyond.

I think if you look at the missions that the efforts NASA IT is working on, it certainly maps to those objectives.

To Bob’s last point:

What’s with these guys?  Where’s my flying car, dammit!

I find it odd (and insulting) that some seek to blame those whose job is mission support — and doing a great job of it — as if they’re the cause of the downfall of space exploration.  Like the rest of us, they’re doing the best they can…fly a mile in their shoes.

Better yet, take a deeper look at to what they’re doing and how it maps to supporting the very things you wish were NASA’s longer term focus — because at the end of the day when the global economy recovers, we’ll certainly be looking to go where no man and his computing platform has gone before.

/Hoff

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You’ll forgive my impertinence, but the last time I saw a similar claim of a PCI compliant Cloud offering, it turned out rather anti-climatically for RackSpace/Mosso, so I just want to make sure I understand what is really being said.  I may be mixing things up in asking my questions, so hopefully someone can shed some light.

This press release announces that:

“…Verizon’s On-Demand Cloud Computing Solution First to Achieve PCI Compliance” and the company’s cloud computing solution called Computing as a Service (CaaS) which is “…delivered from Verizon cloud centers in the U.S. and Europe, is the first cloud-based solution to successfully complete the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) audit for storing, processing and transmitting credit card information.”

It’s unclear to me (at least) what’s considered in scope and what level/type of PCI certification we’re talking about here since it doesn’t appear that the underlying offering itself is merchant or transactional in nature, but rather Verizon is operating as a service provider that stores, processes, and transmits cardholder data on behalf of another entity.

Here’s what the article says about what Verizon undertook for DSS validation:

To become PCI DSS-validated, Verizon CaaS underwent a comprehensive third-party examination of its policies, procedures and technical systems, as well as an on-site assessment and systemwide vulnerability scan.

I’m interested in the underlying mechanicals of the CaaS offering.  Specifically, it would appear that the platform – compute, network, and storage — are virtualized.  What is unclear is if the [physical] resources allocated to a customer are dedicated or shared (multi-tenant,) regardless of virtualization.

According to this article in The Register (dated 2009,) the infrastructure is composed like this:

The CaaS offering from Verizon takes x64 server from Hewlett-Packard and slaps VMware’s ESX Server hypervisor and Red Hat Enterprise Linux instances atop it, allowing customers to set up and manage virtualized RHEL partitions and their applications. Based on the customer portal screen shots, the CaaS service also supports Microsoft’s Windows Server 2003 operating system.

Some details emerge from the Verizon website that describes the environment more:

Every virtual farm comes securely bundled with a virtual load balancer, a virtual firewall, and defined network space. Once the farm is designed, built, and named – all in a matter of minutes through the CaaS Customer Management Portal – you can then choose whether you want to manage the servers in-house or have us manage them for you.

If the customer chooses to manage the “servers…in-house (sic)” is the customer’s network, staff and practices now in-scope as part of Verizon’s CaaS validation? Where does the line start/stop?

I’m very interested in the virtual load balancer (Zeus ZXTM perhaps?) and the virtual firewall (vShield? Altor? Reflex? VMsafe-API enabled Virtual Appliance?)  What about other controls (preventitive or detective such as IDS, IPS, AV, etc.)

The reason for my interest is how, if these resources are indeed shared, they are partitioned/configured and kept isolated especially in light of the fact that:

Customers have the flexibility to connect to their CaaS environment through our global IP backbone or by leveraging the Verizon Private IP network (our Layer 3 MPLS VPN) for secure communication with mission critical and back office systems.

It’s clear that Verizon has no dominion over what’s contained in the VM’s atop the hypervisor, but what about the network to which these virtualized compute resources are connected?

So for me, all this all comes down to scope. I’m trying to figure out what is actually included in this certification, what components in the stack were audited and how.  It’s not clear I’m going to get answers, but I thought I’d ask any way.

Oh, by the way, transparency and auditability would be swell for an environment such as this. How about CloudAudit? We even have a PCI DSS CompliancePack 😉

Question for my QSA peeps: Are service providers required to also adhere to sections like 6.6 (WAF/Binary analysis) of their offerings even if they are not acting as a merchant?

/Hoff

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Mike Dahn pinged me via Twitter with an interesting and challenging question:

I took this as a challenge in 5 minutes or less to articulate this in succinct, bulleted form.  I timed it. 4 minutes & 48 seconds. Loaded with snark and Hoffacino-fueled dogma.

Here goes:

1. Get an Amazon Web Services [or Rackspace or Terremark vCloud Express, etc.] account, instantiate a couple of instances as though you were deploying a web-based application with sensitive information that requires resilience, security, survivability and monitoring. If you have never done this and you’re in security spouting off about the insecurities of Cloud, STFU and don’t proceed to step 2 until you do.  These offerings put much of the burden on you to understand what needs to be done to secure Cloud-based services (OS, Apps, Data) which is why I focus on it. It’s also accessible and available to everyone.
   –
2. Take some time to be able to intelligently understand that as abstracted as much of Cloud is in terms of  the lack of exposed operational moving parts, you still need to grok architecture holistically in order to be able to secure it — and the things that matter most within it.  Building survivable systems, deploying securable (and as secure as you can make it) code, focusing on protecting information and ensuring you understand system design and The Three R’s (Resistance, Recognition, Recovery) is pretty darned important.  That means you have to understand how the Cloud provider actually works so when they don’t you’ll already have planned around that…
   –
3. Employ a well-developed risk assessment/management framework and perform threat modeling. See OCTAVE, STRIDE/DREAD, FAIR.  Understanding whether an application or datum is OK to move to “the Cloud” isn’t nuanced. It’s a simple application of basic, straightforward and prudent risk management. If you’re not doing that now, Cloud is the least of your problems. As I’ve said in the past “if your security sucks now, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the lack of change when you move to Cloud.”
   –
4. Proceed to the Cloud Security Alliance website and download the guidance. Read it. Join one or more of the working groups and participate to make Cloud Security better in any way you believe you have the capacity to do so.  If you just crow about how “more secure” the Cloud is or how “horribly insecure by definition” it is, it’s clear you’ve not done steps 1-3. Skip 1-3, go to #5 and then return to #1.
   –
5. Use common sense.  There ain’t no patch for stupid.  Most of us inherently understand that this is a marathon and not a sprint. If you take steps 1-4 seriously you’re going to be able to logically have discussions and make decisions about what deployment models and providers suit your needs. Not everything will move to the Cloud (public, private or otherwise) but a lot of it can and should. Being able to layout a reasonable timeline is what moves the needle. Being an idealog on either side of the tarpit does nobody any good.  Arguing is for Twitter, doing is for people who matter.

Cloud is only rocket science if you’re NASA and using the Cloud for rocket science.  Else, for the rest of us, it’s an awesome platform upon which we leverage various opportunities to improve the way in which we think about and implement the practices and technology needed to secure the things that matter most to us.

/Hoff

(Yeah, I know. Not particularly novel or complex, right? Nope. That’s the point. Just like  “How to Kick Ass in Information Security — Hoff’s Spritually-Enlightened Top Ten Guide to Health, Wealth and Happiness“)

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In advance of publishing a more consolidated compilation of various recordings of my presentations, I thought I’d post this one.

This is from Microsoft’s BlueHat v9 and is from my “Cloudifornication: Indiscriminate Information Intercourse Involving Internet Infrastructure” presentation.

The direct link is here in case you have scripting disabled.

The follow-on to this is my latest presentation – “Cloudinomicon: Idempotent Infrastructure, Building Survivable Systems, and Bringing Sexy Back To Information Centricity.”

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It’s 10:13pm on a Friday night and as the highlight of my day begrudgingly reveals itself, I discover in preparation for the inevitable appearance of tomorrow, that I am once again out of clean underwear.

There are many potential remedies for this situation.

Option number one suggests I could borrow a pair of my wife’s low-cuts.  She’s out of town and would never know, except perhaps discovering upon her return the horribly awkward and uncomfortable remnants of chafing in places we simply and politely just don’t talk about at parties.

Option number two involves what I call ‘The Braveheart.” Commando fashionista. Rivets on Levis put a quick end to that potential.

Option number three. CVS. It’s open 24 hours. They sell boxers. I saw them last week when I ran out of toothpaste in a similarly-themed domestic challenge. However, it’s now 10:16pm and whilst the pharmacy is only 10 minutes away, I’d prefer not to have to explain or even acknowledge to the cashier — silently with a sheepish grin and a telling nod — why it is I am buying underwear instead of beer at 10pm on a Friday night.

Option number four. The uncomfortable reconciliation of fact.  Laundry.

Laundry is not an altogether alien concept to me.

In a house where I am surrounded by a fortress of estrogen-themed daily drama, couture — or namely the availability of fresh sources of same, not found strewn around the house in piles resembling Inuit housing — is a constant and simultaneous source of both amusement and utter distress.

I know how it works.  More specifically I know how it *should* work. It’s not that difficult a concept to master.

I contemplate, strangely, what it would be like if option number four required something other than a modest jaunt to the basement where lives the ominous apparatus that does diligent battle with the detritus threatening the sanctity of my linens.

I reckon back to the days of college and of single life in an apartment where this capability was not installed, where I had to pack up my dirty vestments, remember the detergent, fabric softener, dryer sheets and a thousand dollars in quarters and trek to…

The laundromat.

I re-imagine the hours I’ve spent there.

Strangely-timed appearances meant to avoid the rush which is met with the soul-crushing realization that everyone else uses the same random number generator to decide when to show.  The ludicrous rituals of basket placement and folding table land-wars.  The hope that at some point in the next 12 hours, the illusion of infinite laundry scale will avail itself to me.

I remember these things.

I remember the rust-stained linoleum flooring. Faded pictures and warning emblems threatening sure and certain death from things like asphyxiation, electrocution, strangulation and loss of appendages.  I am particularly disturbed and most concerned with the latter.

The community bulletin board is always a symbolic mecca for the cultural awesomesauce around which a neighborhood is formed; an eclectic mix of lost pets, waterbed auctions, spanish and math tutoring services, guitar or tuba lessons (your choice) and a never-ending supply of for-sale-by-owner-1984-in-good-condition-runs-perfectly-Honda Civics.

And yoga lessons.

Because with a wash-rinse-dry-fold cycle time of approximately 2 hours, down dog and vinyasas are a natural way to pass the time.  I must admit to never having witnessed yoga in a laundromat. Unless you consider two newlyweds making out in the corner as Yoga.

I recall the sweet and confusingly intoxicating smell of Downy.  That earthy, hot, suffocating perfumed humidity of 1000 dryers tumbling in a rhytmic chant of anti-moistness. Low frequency undulating serenity drummed into my consciousness, starkly punctuated with the the alarming and syncopated rupture of tempo by unrecovered pocket change falling out of jeans, producing a staccato “pitta-chank, pitta-chank, clink, donk.”

And then, the fear.  The fear that I don’t have enough quarters and that the change machine doesn’t take ten dollar bills and that I’ve forgotten to bring something to read, nourishment, hydration, motivation…

I recollect the homeless man curled up in the corner under the flickering TV that only gets Korean soap operas with a vertical lock problem and the industrial-sized machines used for washing tents, small couches or horse blankets.  There’s the cigarette, whiskey and cruely time-stained woman in 50 cent curlers in her high-fashion and Heathcliff slippers, unshaven legs and a hawaiian print moomoo reading People magazine, snickering at the misfortunes of multi-millionaire actresses jilted by their spoiled no-talent actor suitors.  Venom.

But most fondly I smile — almost vindictively — at the memory of the man staring hopelessly at the bank of identical washers, each in spin cycle, wondering which three were his and hopelessly wondering why it is that he is mesmerized and distracted then by the one pink sock in a load of all black washing, flitting back and forth through the porthole in the jumbo drier.

It’s then that  I flash forward to the now, staring at the highly advanced, extremely efficient and 100% available and dedicated GE Monogram front-loading washer and dryer standing before me in my basement.  They’re color matched in a silver hue not unlike that of a fighter jet — beautiful, sexy and — if you paid attention to the warnings in the laundromat — potentially deadly.

Speaking of which, I’m quite sure it *is* possible to drown in a front-loader, but the process eludes me.  Perhaps out of respect for the grieving family of anyone stupid enough who has managed to kill his or herself in a running washing machine. Perhaps because I’m thinking way too much about how this can be done.

The physical attractiveness is not the most compelling element of my dirt-ridding-appliances. It’s the fact that they belong to me.

Mine.

Now.

Forever.

No waiting.

No vehicular excursions. No lady in a moomoo. No territorial battles waged over timing issues between washing machine to dryer transfer latency.

All. Mine.

You see, although I recognize the idealistic beauty and utility of the laundromat, it’s beaten down and mocked selfishly by the bully that is the convenience of dedicated capacity.

The convenience of discretionary load times. The availability of highly-customized wash/dry settings.  Knowing that I didn’t just put my clothes in a vessel that rid unmentionables from someone’s love-stained sheets.

No nickel-and-diming me for quarters because the spin cycle was too short or where I end up paying twice as much for the utility of centralized community resources that do only 80% of what I need in drying cycles because my heavy thread-count towels are just too damned thick.  Nobody else gets to mistakenly touch my loads or scowl at me because I wasn’t neurotically hawking over the dwell times and exfiltrating things the microsecond a cycle was complete.

It is true, however, that I had to pay for the privilege of doing my laundry when and however I see fit and yes, frankly, sometimes the demand for use outstrips the supply, but ultimately, unless it’s comforter day, I can just plan better to make better use of what I have available to me.  Or I’ll make use of the industrial sized washers for my comforters in well-planned, more reasonably strategic washing sessions for when I need that scale, bulk or don’t really need a delicate cycle.

I can’t tell you what it *actually* costs per load of laundry in my basement. I admit I’ve long written off the books the initial investment of purchase. It seems less than what it costs per load to visit the laundromat.  Perhaps that’s just wishful thinking or perhaps it’s worth every penny not to have to share folding space with a man who reeks of kielbasa and Marlboro lights.  That’s not to say I don’t find him amusing in a cinema-verite sort of way.

Nor do I write off the efficiency and service this place provides.  It’s just that it doesn’t provide all things to all people and that’s OK.  The point is, those that need or like this place come here but you don’t hear them espousing that the only one true way to do laundry is at the laundromat, nor do they speak of the “laundromat revolution” whilst sipping hot chocolate or gatorade and finger-snap clapping to the pretentious preaching of bitter launderers.

It just is and I’m cool with that.  Just like my washing own washer and dryer is.  This simply isn’t about religion, righteousness, idealogs or dogma. It’s about getting my underwear clean.

I visit the laundromat still.  Because it’s useful to me.  Because it offers utility for things that are important to me.  But not because of some idealistic need to share space with others or make someone else money.  Afterall, utility is about choice.  There’s no right or wrong if a solution meets my needs.

So my underwear is washed and prior to drying it — at my leisure — I have managed to consume a snack in between watching something on Netflix, playing with my dog and — surprisingly — contemplating those guitar lessons.  I can’t say I miss the lady in curlers, but the dead potted plant that exists in both realities — my house and the laundromat — offers some comfort through familiarity.

Do I feel guilty for the inefficient hoarding of resources in my basement and not suggesting to my neighbor that they abandon their machines or pool them with mine to produce a kibbutz-like washing utility for the neighborhood at large?

No.

However, I would consider having a folding party if that makes you feel any better.

Utility is in how you use things, not necessarily how it’s offered.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I got an interesting tweet sent to me today that asked a great question:

I thought about this and it occurred to me that while I would have liked to have answered that the Cloud Security Alliance Guidance was my first choice, I think the most appropriate answer is actually the following:

“Cloud Security and Privacy: An Enterprise Perspective on Risks and Compliance”  by Tim Mather, Subra Kumaraswamy, and Shahed Latif is an excellent overview of the issues (and approaches to solutions) for Cloud Security and privacy. Pair it with the CSA and ENISA guidance and you’ve got a fantastic set of resources.  I’d also suggest George Reese’s excellent book “Cloud Application Architectures: Building Applications and Infrastructure in the Cloud”

I suppose it’s only fair to disclose that I played a small part in reviewing/commenting on both of these books prior to being published 😉

/Hoff