SSL is a Keystone of Cloud Security

Cloud Computing is an emerging technology, welcomed by many organizations. This service offers liberty from handling hardware and software troubles. There are some features as virtualization and easy sharing of Computing, low cost, and speedy internet access have made Cloud Computing popular across the cyber world. Now, organizations are showing interest in a public cloud for outsourcing to bring cost down, and increase business agility. However, this outsourcing comes with some security risks that can harm a cloud server. Therefore, many cloud providers offer first preference to security in such a threat environment.

To cope with security demands, cloud providers should have SSL (secure socket layer) for server protection. The transition of information that is being carried out between the server and the browser will remain secure with SSL protocol, and provides enhanced protection against numerous cyber attacks like man-in-middle attack, spoofing, data theft, etc. If you purchase SSL from trusted certificate authority, then it is going to help you a lot in case of data security.

• Access Benefits: Cloud Service provider should have enough access control, supervision and hiring for delegation of administration.
• Conformation: Data audit is compulsory on the part of enterprise and ensures the provider that their data is coped with regulatory compliances even in a public cloud.
• Data location: When you choose a cloud provider, you must reveal about their data center location, and make sure such data centers fulfill the requirement of privacy & security.
• Data Segregation: Due to shared environment, public cloud might fail to provide a guarantee about data isolation that secures multi-tenancy.
• Data revival: Enterprise must make sure that their cloud provider can revive their data in case of any hacked situation or any type of disasters. Otherwise, enterprise will have to loss historical data due to inability of data revival.
• Monitoring: Enterprise should check about monitoring of public cloud activity, which can prevent an upcoming threat on servers, and the data will remain secure on the server. If any issue arises during monitoring, it should be reported to the enterprise.

SSL works on three fundamentals like encryption, authentication, and trust assurance. Enterprise should check about encryption strength that should not be less than 256-bit encryption and follow industry standards. In case of verification, enterprise makes sure that the server is authenticated with implementation of a third party certificate. Many organizations have self-signed certificate, which diminishes trust of people and issues a warning about authentication on your ecommerce website.

At last, after considering server and domain, enterprise should look at certificate validity to make sure that the certificate is valid since it was issued. Every time when SSL handshakes begin, SSL is checked against revocation list of certificates. CRL (certificate revocation list) and OCSP (online certificate status protocol) help to determine revocation of certificate.

SSL can really help cloud computing in many areas like regulatory compliance, monitoring data, building trust, backup, and recovery.

• Regulatory Compliance: To secure data over the cloud, enterprise must follow some regulations and acts like Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act, Payment Card Industry Security Standard (PCI-DSS), and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). At the time of IT outsourcing, enterprise should comply with data security and integrity and for effective security management enterprise must supervise some compliance instead of straightaway relying only on cloud provider. In this case, SSL encryption prevents unintentional revelation of secured private data due to automation of data conscientiousness and data access.
• Monitoring data: Public cloud ensures data access everywhere and is unclear about the location and data. However, if a cloud provider uses SSL to encrypt the data, he can easily monitor the data flow. Some of the third party certificate authorities have banned issuing SSL in some prohibited countries like North Korea, Iran. Therefore, enterprise must ensure that their data is not stored on IT hardware belonging to such countries.
• Backup: Enterprise needs to know about the method of data backup of a cloud provider in case of any disaster. It is a duty of an enterprise to know the ability of cloud provider in case of data restoration and the expected time for data restoration. SSL creates an extra layer to backup and data recovery process assuring that the data retrieved from backup got encryption during transition, and the server is legitimate.
• Building Trust: SSL provides a high level of reliability that is a requirement of a cloud service. Cloud provider should use third party authenticated SSL certificate at minimum 256-bit encryption. The data transfers between the user desktop and the company server remains encrypted, and the outsider cannot intercept it, therefore; enterprise data will remain safe in the cloud. It will bring confidence to enterprise, cloud provider, and build trust among them.

• Domain Validation SSL, which provides basic authentication of domain and ensures that the person applied for the domain has the right to use it and such certificate is an ideal for server to browser connection.
• Organization Validation SSL that establishes the identity of your enterprise, and the visitor can check the certificate details, including business name, certificate authority name, release date, expire date, etc.
• Extended Validation SSL, which is serve highest level of authenticity and protection on the server. It validates your domain and business. Furthermore, ensures that the person applied for a certificate is the legal owner of an enterprise.  It serves the best protection over the web with strong authentication. It is also renowned for the green bar security certificate.

From the above piece of information, while selecting cloud-computing service, it is essential to check all the security parameters that cloud provider offers as security plays an essential part in cloud computing to avoid different vulnerability in the system, and by default, SSL should be a part of cloud security.