News
Computer security team defines cloud computing
2 June 2009
A working definition for cloud computing — a new computer technique
with potential for achieving significant cost savings and information
technology agility — has been released by a team of computer security
experts at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Since the US federal government is considering cloud computing as a
component of its new technology infrastructure, it is NIST’s role to
evaluate it and then promote its effective and secure use within
government and industry by providing technical guidance and developing
standards.
The working definition of cloud computing described by NIST is “a
pay-per-use model for enabling available, convenient and on-demand
network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources
(e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, services) that can be
rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or
service provider interaction.”
The draft working definition also describes five key characteristics,
three delivery models and four deployment models.
The NIST cloud computing research team is studying cloud
architectures, security and deployment strategies for the federal
government. But its first task was to collaborate with industry and
government to develop a working definition of cloud computing that will
serve as a foundation for its research.
The term 'cloud computing' comes from the field’s standard use of
drawing the Internet as a cloud in diagrams.
Security is always a concern with any new computer approach, and this
one is no different. According to cloud research team leader Peter Mell.
“Cloud computing has both security advantages and disadvantages. The
cloud computing model inherently promotes availability of services
through its distributed architecture model. However, this same model
presents data confidentiality and integrity challenges by pooling
hardware resources for use by multiple parties.”
The full working draft definition is available at
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/index.html.
Comments on the definition can be sent to cloud@nist.gov.
|