Cybersecurity: Managing Systems, Conducting Testing, and Investigating Intrusions

CHAPTER 12

Large Enterprise Cybersecurity: Data Centers and Clouds

Large enterprises differ dramatically from small businesses, primarily in complexity and the pace of change. Large numbers of computing devices and large numbers of people interacting, both internally and externally, mean that there are constant changes, such as people joining and leaving, devices being continually added, replaced, updated, and failing. Secure transactions and data sets can number in the millions.

Some of the security principles for large enterprises are the same as they are for smaller organizations, but the scale of change and complexity, the heightened exposure, both inside and outside, result in security needs that are much more formalized and automated. For example, an announcement of new vulnerabilities means that large enterprises have very significant new exposures, and must rush to implement patches and repairs.

With the economy of scale of large enterprises, it makes sense to collocate information technology (IT) resources in data centers, which offer the highest qualities of service, such as reliable power, cooling, automated backup, virtualization, automatic provisioning, and automated security services. Private clouds of virtualized computing resources are the state-of-the-art solutions for addressing scalability, reliability, and enterprise agility. Similarly, public clouds are placing these economies of scale within reach of businesses of all sizes. These market changes are changing ...