Private Cloud with System Center 2012 and the Cloud Security Challenges – Part 1

Introduction

If you were at Share Cloud Dallas last month in our presentation about Private Cloud Security you probably remember one topic that we discussed called “Cloud Security Challenges
Secondary to Cloud Essential Characteristics”. This series of post that I’m going to write (at least one per week) will explain how Private Cloud with System Center 2012 can assist you to address those concerns.

Cloud Security Challenge 1 – Resource Pooling

Problem Statement as described in the Private Cloud Security Paper: As the consumer (tenant) of the services offered by a private cloud in my enterprise, I want to be sure that the data in my application is secure, that no-on else can access it, and that it is safe if something untoward occurs.

How System Center 2012 can assist you with this Challenge?

System Center 2012 Role-Based Access Control and User Role features can assist you with that. Partitioning and Role Based Access Control (RBAC) also applies to your administrators, who should not have automatic access to tenant data. In the case where an administrator does require access to tenant data, then that access must be carefully audited.

With the User Role Wizard you can even customize the user role for that particular cloud as shown below:

When creating a User Role you can also determine the scope for the User, in other words, which Cloud that user (or users) will be able to perform those pre-defined actions:

For a full demonstration on how to perform those actions use the video below (skip to minute 33:03):