Optimizing the utilization of computing systems based on systems security ranking.
Publication Date: 2018-Oct-11
Publishing Venue
The IP.com Prior Art Database
Optimizing The Utilization Of Computing Systems Based On Security Systems
Ranking
Abstract:
Changes in the technological advancements changes requirements quite often.
Advancements in technology add on as a need for the Cloud providers to keep up with
them, especially in the field of security as security is always a top priority to the end
users. However, keeping up with latest advancements in security is not easy as it
requires lot of investments. The idea in this article solves this problem by proposing to
define security ranking of the systems based on their capabilities.
Description:
The big data centers comprise of thousands of systems. These data centers are built over
a period of time and consists of both legacy and new range of systems. Apart from other
functional requirements, one of the key requirements from customers is security
requirements. The customer security requirements may also change over the period of
time and might get stricter. These requirements may not be getting satisfied by the current
or legacy systems in the data center. However, upgradation to the new systems is
expensive for the business. In such cases, the question that comes up is how to satisfy
the customers’ security requirements. The idea in this article solves the problem for such
Cloud Providers who had put up so much investments on systems. However,after
sometime these systems do not satisfy security requirements for all the customers in an
IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) environment. For Example:
◦ Some systems come with cryptography acceleration but others might not have
it. So, if a provider had recently purchased a system without these security
features, but now has a new healthcare client that needs them, then he might
have to purchase newer hardware. But what does he do with his investments
on hardware without these security features?
◦ Some other end users might have a requirement that their virtual machine
should be provisioned on a system which has security protection end-to-end
from hardware to virtual machine in the stack.
◦ Some users on the other hand might require just a particular security function
provided by the hardware.
Economically, the data centers can update to few latest systems within their budget
requirements and maintain both the legacy and new systems. This way they can continue
to use their investment in the legacy systems. However, the question still exists as to how
best to satisfy the security needs of customers like the ones called out above. Looking at
these systems from security perspective, they form a pool of systems which can satisfy
different security requirements. There might be a customer with no security specific
workload for eg, public photo sharing forums, but there can also be a financial customer
with not only a specific security requirement like say Kerberos authentication but also
expecting his system to be compliant to say PCI (Payment card Industry) security
standard. In such case a customer’s workload...
