Welcome to the "A Solution for Private Cloud Security" series of three papers on private cloud security. With increasing numbers of organizations looking to create cloud-based environments or to implement cloud technologies within their existing data centers, business and technology decision-makers are looking closely at the possibilities and practicalities that these changes involve.

Evidence of this growth of interest in the cloud is shown by organizations such as Gartner, who in their 2011 poll of Chief Information Officers identified cloud computing as the top technology priority

Note:
This document is part of a collection of documents that comprise the Reference Architecture for Private Cloud document set. The Solution for Private Cloud is a community collaboration project. Please feel free to edit this document to improve its quality. If you would like to be recognized for your work on improving this document, please include your name and any contact information you wish to share at the bottom of this page 

Although the increase in business agility coupled with greater flexibility of service provisioning are convincing arguments in favor of moving to the private and hybrid cloud models, significant deployment blockers remain. The Gartner 2012 Planning Guide on Security and Risk Management identified security as the top issue for cloud adoption. Consequently, progress towards implementing private cloud technologies will not advance without organizations and IT departments showing how they can effectively address these concerns.

Microsoft is investing heavily on developing innovative technologies that enable organizations to design and create robust and comprehensive private and hybrid cloud environments. This guidance considers the security aspects of these designs and consists of the following three papers:

Blueprint for A Solution for Private Cloud Security

Design Guide for A Solution for Private Cloud Security

Operations Guide for A Solution for Private Cloud Security

Together, these three documents provide a comprehensive explanation of the process for designing and running security for such a private cloud environment. These documents all use the Microsoft Private Cloud Reference Model as the framework for the security discussion.

Download all three documents in the A Solution for Private Cloud Security document set in Word format.

Figure 1 provides a graphical representation of the documents that comprise the "A Solution for Private Cloud Security" document set. You can download this document map in Visio .vsd format, which contains clickable links to each document.


Figure 1 - Content Map for "A Solution for Private Cloud Security"

Complete Table of Contents for “A Solution for Private Cloud Security”

A Solution for Private Cloud Security

Blueprint for a A Solution for Private Cloud Security

Defining the Private Cloud Security Domain

Cloud Security Challenges

Private Cloud Reference Model – Security Perspective

Private Cloud Security Model

• Private Cloud Security Model – Wrapper Functionality
• Private Cloud Security Model – Infrastructure Security
• Private Cloud Security Model – Platform Security
• Private Cloud Security Model – Software Security
• Private Cloud Security Model – Service Delivery Security
• Private Cloud Security Model – Management Security
• Private Cloud Security Model – Client Security
• Private Cloud Security Model – Legal and Compliance Issues

Design Guide for A Solution for Private Cloud Security

Private Cloud Security Design Principles

Private Cloud Security Design Challenges

• Private Cloud Security Design Challenges – Resource Pooling
• Private Cloud Security Design Challenges – Broad Network Access
• Private Cloud Security Design Challenges – On-Demand Self Service
• Private Cloud Security Design Challenges – Rapid Elasticity
• Private Cloud Security Design Challenges – Measured Services

Operations Guide for A Solution for Private Cloud Security

Private Cloud Security Operations Principles

Private Cloud Security Operations Challenges

• Private Cloud Security Design Challenges – Resource Pooling
• Private Cloud Security Design Challenges – Broad Network Access
• Private Cloud Security Design Challenges – On-Demand Self Service
• Private Cloud Security Design Challenges – Rapid Elasticity
• Private Cloud Security Design Challenges – Measured Services

Series Aim

The aim of the Solution for Private Cloud Security documents is to provide you with an architectural view for understanding, designing and operating effective security within a private cloud environment.

Audience

This series targets a range of potential audiences, all of whom fall within the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) definition of a cloud provider. These audiences can include the following cloud roles:

• Decider
• Designer
• Implementer
• Operator

We hope you find this series useful and informative. To provide review comments and feedback, please write to Tom Shinder at tomsh@microsoft.com.

CONTRIBUTORS AND REVIEWERS
We would like to give a heartfelt thanks to the following contributors and reviewers for this beta (v0.95) version of the "A Solution for Private Cloud Security" document set. Without their comprehensive and detailed writing and reviews, this work could not have been possible.

Anthony Stevens, Content Master (author)
Dominic Betts, Content Master (author)
Thomas W Shinder, M.D., Microsoft Corporation (reviewer and project manager)
Yuri Diogenes, Microsoft Corporation (reviewer)
Fernando Cima, Microsoft Corporation (reviewer)
Frank Koch, Microsoft Corporation (reviewer)
Scott Culp, Microsoft Corporation (reviewer)
Allen Brokken, Microsoft Corporation (reviewer)
The Private Cloud Security v-team, Microsoft Corporation (reviewer)

RESOURCES:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS LIST:
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