Cloud Security is constantly evolving as the rate of cloud computing’s growth is increasing. Cloud security is responsible to protect cloud computing’s data and other critical infrastructure. Companies in the IT industry are constantly seeking individuals with advanced knowledge in this area.
In this article, we will cover the Top 10 Cloud Security interview questions and answers to help you crack your next interview.
1) What are the different threats in cloud security?
Different cloud security threats include:
1. Data Breach
A data breach happens when unauthorized individuals access cloud systems to compromise data. An organization’s safety cannot be guaranteed if attackers have access to its data.
Businesses have suffered significant data breaches, including the mid-2018 Tesla cloud cryptojacking, which exposed sensitive telemetry data. This happened because the company failed to encrypt one of its cloud accounts.
Human error is the leading cause of data breaches. If your employees are not adequately educated or have no knowledge, they could easily expose your company to hackers. This is why it is crucial to provide cybersecurity and data protection training and education to all employees.
2. Insider Threats
Sometimes the greatest threats to an organization’s cybersecurity come from within. Insider threats are often more difficult and time-consuming to identify than outsider threats.
Masterminds are often individuals who have legitimate access to an organization’s cloud systems. Insider threats can cause significant damage to your cloud system. It is essential to respond to insider threats by investigating and detecting them immediately.
These attacks are often undetected for long periods because businesses don’t have suitable systems and are not prepared to detect and fix them. Companies have very little or no control over the cloud infrastructure. Traditional security solutions might not work as long as vendors retain significant power.
Monitoring user analytics and getting visibility into behavior anomalies can help to detect an active insider threat. It also allows you to put employees and processes through adversary simulation and control tuning.
3. Denial-of-Service
An ever-increasing number of businesses are shifting their data to the cloud. These cloud-based applications and critical internal functions are often vulnerable to denial of service attacks.
A denial-of-service attack involves a hacker flooding a system, flooding it with web traffic beyond its capacity. Operations are halted completely, and internal users and customers can’t access the system. This makes it impossible to run the business.
Companies need to be able to prevent denial-of-service attacks from causing serious problems. Dynamic application security tools can be used to scan web applications for potential threats. They will detect them as they occur and warn you before they become serious.
4. Insecure APIs and Interfaces
Software interfaces and APIs usually manage cloud services provisioning, monitoring, and maintenance. While cloud service providers have been working hard to improve APIs and interfaces over the years, this has led to increased security risks.
Providers of cloud services use a particular framework to offer APIs to programmers. This makes their systems more susceptible to hackers. Organizations are at risk of unauthorized authorizations. This can be solved by learning how to design cloud security using a multi-layer approach. This will help to curb unauthorized access and protect the software you create.
5. Account hijacking
A high number of account hijacking cases can also be attributed to the increasing reliance on cloud-based infrastructure.
Attacks such as account hijacking can also cause damage to a brand’s reputation and the relationships it has with its customers. One cyberattack can destroy the integrity and good name a company has earned over the years. Customers could also sue the company if they reveal their confidential information.
It is vital to implement cutting-edge electronic surveillance and multifactor access system to minimize the risk of account hijacking and operations disruption. Working with providers that offer security logs, encrypted storage, and secure data transfer will help detect brute-force attacks.
6. Misconfiguration
Cloud-based infrastructure is a complex area that many business owners don’t know much about. This can lead to data breaches that could impact their business operations.
The increased risk of misconfiguration arises due to corporations wanting to make their Cloud data accessible and shareable. It is essential to ensure that critical security measures like client-side encryption and intrusion detection systems are configured correctly to prevent any data breach caused by misconfiguration.
2) Can you name and describe some cloud security controls you should be using?
1. Centralised Visibility
Cloud security poses new risks. You must incorporate centralized visibility into security policies and configuration settings to ensure that important data is protected, secure, compliant, and compliant in the cloud. Centralized visibility helps you to understand vulnerabilities. Cloud workload protection (CWP), which allows software users to assess and monitor the configuration status of cloud-based software, is an important feature that developers use.
2. A Strong Perimeter Firewall
A firewall is a system that prevents unauthorized access and use of your network. While a strong perimeter firewall can be a simple defense system, it is essential to stop the most sophisticated and persistent data threats.
3. Always back up your data
This security control is often neglected, but it is crucial to ensure that your data is backed up. You have greater control over your data if it is backed up. T-Mobile was the victim of a massive data breach in November 2019. Cybercriminals stole the personal information of more than a million American customers. T-Mobile had to deal with the theft of customer data. They also didn’t have a backup, so they were left with virtually nothing. Keep your most important data safe and secure in a different location. It sounds simple, but it is vital.
4. Keep an eye on internal firewalls
Strong perimeter firewalls, as mentioned previously, are crucial. However, internal attacks can also be a threat. To restrict access to sensitive data or applications, internal firewalls are used.
5. Watch out for insecure APIs
Application Programming Interfaces are another major cloud security problem. Cloud computing’s most vulnerable elements are APIs and unsecured interfaces. Although APIs allow users to personalize their cloud experience, they can also pose a threat to cloud security in your organization. This risk can be reduced by implementing a strong authentication and access control system and a secure interface to the cloud provider. These security mechanisms should be used in conjunction with encrypted transmission and understanding the APIs’ dependency chains.
3) What is CCM?
The Cloud control matrix (CCM) is the standard for protecting a cloud environment. What is the point of it all? Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) has formulated it as a reference point of security controls. It assists organizations in assessing the risks associated with cloud computing providers.
The CSA created the matrix with industry players, government agencies, cloud service providers, enterprises, and other stakeholders. It is the most complete cloud security standard available. The CCM covers 16 security domains.
1. Application and Interface Security.
The application and interface security areas are part of the matrix and govern application security, data integrity, and customer access requirements.
2. Audit Assurance and Compliance.
Audit planning is the first step in audit assurance and compliance. Understanding a control framework that is based on standards and regulations is the last. This section includes independent audits and audit planning.
3. Business Continuity Management & Operational Resilience.
Without reliability and continuity, a security system cannot be trusted. This section of the CCM covers business continuity planning, testing, and maintenance, as well as environmental conditions.
4. Configuration Management and Change Control.
As the name implies, this is where you can make decisions about how to handle changes or acquire new data. This is also where you can create new infrastructures and data centers.
This includes outsourced development, new development or acquisition, quality testing, and production changes.
5. Data Security and Information Lifecycle Management.
This section is the most detailed. This section focuses on data-related issues. It also discusses how to manage inventory and data flow best.
6. Data Center Security.
This section of the cloud control matrix is concerned with the physical security and availability of your servers and data centers. This includes asset management and physical access control. You should be familiar with equipment identification, offsite equipment authorization, access, and other control domains.
7. Encryption and Key Management.
Cloud security is incomplete without encryption. This section of the CCM addresses key management policies, key generation, and sensitive data protection storage and access.
8. Governance and Risk Management.
cloud security requirements are not restricted to the business’s internal policies. The requirements also cover external factors such as laws and regulations. This section deals with data-focused risks assessments, management oversight and support, involvement policy enforcement, risk assessment, and security protocols review.
9. Human Resources.
Only those who are involved in security policies can make them effective. This section focuses on human resource management. This section focuses on the critical areas of employee termination, mobile device management, roles and responsibilities, and awareness and training.
10. Identity and Access Management (IAM).
Cloud security is fundamentally about access management. This control domain is part of the cloud control matrix. These include credential lifecycle and provision management, segregation and duties, access restriction and source code, as well as third-party access.
11. Infrastructure and Virtualization Security.
This category includes logging of intrusion and detection, vulnerability management, and change detection.
12. Interoperability and Portability.
This section deals with APIs and the facilitation of communication among services. This section deals with API data requests and policy, as well as legal issues and maximizing portability.
13. Mobile Security.
Organizations must have a mobile security strategy for mobile devices. This section includes anti-malware, apps stores, approved software, cloud-based service, and other topics.
14. Security Incident Management, Cloud Forensics, and E-Discovery.
Prevention is the best way to ensure cloud security. Sometimes, however, it is necessary to address the consequences of security breaches. This section covers contact and authority maintenance as well as incident reporting and management. It also addresses the legal preparation for the incident response.
15. Supply Chain Management Transparency and Accountability.
This section outlines the domain controls that you should follow. These include data quality, integrity, incident reporting, and supply chain agreements.
16. Management of Threat and Vulnerability.
This is the final piece of the puzzle. It includes three main control domains: antivirus and anti malicious software; vulnerability and patch management; and mobile.
4) Describe the various models for deployment in cloud computing?
There are three types of cloud deployment models available: public, private, and hybrid.
1. Public clouds
Public cloud providers such as AWS (Amazon Web Services), and Microsoft Azure have the infrastructure, physical network, and hypervisor. The company controls the operating system, the applications, the virtual network, the tenant environment, and all data. Cloud services are available for free or through subscriptions or on-demand models.
Public cloud providers are responsible for cloud security controls. The organization must implement security controls for the operating system, applications, supporting infrastructure, and other assets running in the cloud.
Some IT decision-makers believe that the public cloud providers are responsible for deploying security controls to protect sensitive data and their cloud applications.
2. Private cloud
A private cloud is a collection of computing resources that are only used by one company or organization. A private cloud can be located in an organization’s data center or hosted by a third-party service provider. Private clouds are private because the infrastructure and services are maintained over a private network, and only your organization has access to the software and hardware. A private cloud allows an organization to tailor its resources to specific IT needs.
3. Hybrid cloud
Hybrid clouds combine public clouds with on-premises infrastructure so that organizations can benefit from both. Hybrid clouds allow data and applications to move between public and private clouds, giving them greater flexibility and more deployment options. You can use the public cloud to handle a high volume, low-security tasks such as web-based emails. In contrast, the private cloud (or any other on-premises infrastructure) can be used for sensitive, business-critical operations such as financial reporting.
Cloud bursting is an option in hybrid clouds. This happens when an application or resource is running in the private cloud until there’s a spike (such as tax filing or online shopping), at which point it can “burst through to” the public cloud to access additional computing resources.
5) What is Eucalyptus?
Eucalyptus is an open-source software platform that allows you to implement Infrastructure as a Service in a private cloud computing environment or hybrid cloud computing environment.
Because the Eucalyptus cloud computing architecture is distributed, it is incredibly scalable. The Cloud level of the computing infrastructure is composed of two components, and although many users use it, transactions at each component are usually small.
The Eucalyptus Cloud Platform pools existing virtualized infrastructure to create cloud resources. These include Infrastructure as a Service, Network as a service, and Storage as a Service. Eucalyptus stands for elastic utility computing architecture for linking your programs to useful systems
6) Describe Eucalyptus cloud components.
1. Cloud Level Eucalyptus Architecture
a. Cloud Controller (CLC).
The Cloud Controller (CLC), a Java program, provides EC2-compatible SOAP/Query interfaces and a Web interface for the outside world. This allows distribution within the cloud architecture. The CLC handles incoming requests and also acts as an administrative interface for cloud management. It performs system accounting and resource scheduling. The CLC can accept API requests from command line interfaces such as euca2ools and GUI-based tools like the Eucalyptus Management Console. It also manages the underlying computer storage resources and network resources. One CLC is allowed per cloud.
The CLC manages high-level:
- Authentication
- Accounting
- Reporting
- Management of Quota
b. Scalable Object Storage
Scalable Object Storage is Eucalyptus’s equivalent to AWS Simple Storage Service or S3. SOS is a pluggable service that gives infrastructure administrators the flexibility to scale storage on top of commodity resources by using open-source and commercial solutions that implement the S3 interface. Eucalyptus offers a basic storage implementation known as Walrus, suitable for evaluation and small cloud deployments. Users are advised to connect the SOS with dedicated storage solutions like RiakCS for large-scale, higher performance.
2. Cluster Level Eucalyptus Architecture
a. Cluster Controller (CC)
A cluster is the equivalent of an availability zone in AWS. A Eucalyptus cloud may have multiple clusters. The Cluster Controller is written in C. It acts as the front-end for a Eucalyptus cluster and communicates with both the Storage Controller and Node Controller. The CC manages the execution of instances (i.e., virtual machines) and service level agreements (SLAs).
b. Storage Controller (SC)
The Storage Controller (SC), written in Java, is Eucalyptus’ equivalent to AWS Elastic Block Store. The SC communicates within the distributed cloud architecture with the Cluster Controller and Node Controller. It manages Eucalyptus block volume and snapshots for the instances in its cluster. Instances that require persistent data to be written to memory outside the cluster would need to access the backend storage. This is accessible to all instances in any cluster. The SC interfaces to storage systems, including NFS, iSCSI, and SAN.
3. Node Level Eucalyptus Architecture
a. Node Controller (NC)
The Node Controller (NC) is written in C. It hosts virtual machine instances and manages virtual network endpoints. The NC also downloads and caches Scalable Object Storage images and creates and caches instances.
7) Can you name and describe some cloud computing service models?
Software as a Service (SaaS).
SaaS vendors are responsible for setting up cloud security controls on their platforms. This includes application security and infrastructure security. SaaS vendors do not have access to customer data and are not responsible for the use of their applications by customers. Instead, it is the organization’s responsibility to deploy cloud security controls that reduce or prevent malicious attacks.
Infrastructure as an IaaS service (IaaS).
IaaS provides on-demand compute storage and network resources over the Internet using a pay-per-use model. IaaS allows companies to run any operating system on rented servers. This eliminates the need to maintain and operate those servers. IaaS automatically scales up or down. Organizations don’t need to manage servers in their data centers manually.
Platform as an application service (PaaS).
A cloud vendor offers customers a platform to create, manage, and run applications using the PaaS model. Customers don’t have to maintain or build any infrastructure. PaaS vendors host the software and hardware and storage, network, servers, and data infrastructure on their own infrastructure. PaaS providers also provide the tools, data management, middleware, and business intelligence software developers need to create their apps.
8) What is the difference between elasticity and scalability?
Elasticity’s purpose is to match resources with the actual resources required at any particular time. Scalability is the ability to adapt to the changing requirements of an application within the limits of the infrastructure. This can be done by statically adding or subtracting resources as needed. This is usually done by scaling existing instances, also known as vertical scaling or scaling up. Or adding copies to existing instances, which is called scaling out or horizontal scaling. Scalability is also more specific and targeted than elasticity in terms of sizing.
Cloud elasticity is a good choice for e-commerce, retail, mobile, and other environments with ever-changing infrastructure service requirements. A predictable workload means that capacity planning and performance can be predicted and is stable. Businesses with growth cloud scalability could save money.
9) What is a hypervisor?
Virtualization is possible only by using the hypervisor. In its simplest form, the hypervisor is either specialized firmware or software that can be installed on a single hardware device and allow you to host multiple virtual machines. It allows physical hardware and software to be shared between multiple virtual machines. Host machines are computers that run a hypervisor on one or more virtual machines. A guest machine is a virtual machine. The hypervisor allows guest machines to be run on the physical host machine. This enables you to get the most out of computing resources like memory, network bandwidth, CPU cycles, and CPU cycles.
Hypervisors have many advantages.
- Although virtual machines are connected to the same hardware, they can be separated. This means that even if one virtual machine experiences a crash, error, or malware attack, it won’t affect other virtual machines.
- Virtual machines have the added benefit of being mobile and not dependent on the hardware. Because they don’t have physical hardware to link to, switching between remote and local virtualized servers is much easier than traditional applications.
10) What are the different modes of SaaS?
Software as a service (SaaS) is a popular cloud computing model where a third-party vendor or provider offers software applications to consumers over the internet. These services can be scaled and modified by users according to their business needs. Multiple users can access the SaaS applications simultaneously. Users save on infrastructure costs, and expenses can be shared between multiple users. This is done to allow multiple users to access the same data resource while still maintaining data isolation. Two delivery modes are available for the services.
Cross-Grain Multitenancy or Simple Multi-Tenancy This is a hosted model in which users have their own resources and are free from other users. It is not immediately scalable, and users must be comfortable with the low margins caused by high competition. It is easy to use and doesn’t require any code modifications.
Fine-Grain Multi-Tenancy Again, this involves sharing the same database with multiple users. Although the computing resources can be shared, data is kept apart. It’s easy to scale and provides efficiency in services.
Conclusion.
Cloud computing is exploding rapidly, which means that cloud security is becoming increasingly important. This technology offers many opportunities for cloud professionals. This set of questions about cloud security has been created to make it easy for you to crack the interview.
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