P2301 – Guide for Cloud Portability and Interoperability Profiles (CPIP)

 

SOURCES: http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/2301/
http://standards.ieee.org/develop/project/2301.html

Scope

The working group will develop the Guide for Cloud Portability and Interoperability Profiles (CPIP). The guide advises cloud computing ecosystem participants (cloud vendors, service providers, and users) of standards-based choices in areas such as application interfaces, portability interfaces, management interfaces, interoperability interfaces, file formats, and operation conventions. The guide groups these choices into multiple logical profiles, which are organized to address different cloud personalities.

 

Purpose

The purpose of the guide is to assist cloud computing vendors and users in developing, building, and using standards-based cloud computing products and services, which should lead to increased portability, commonality, and interoperability. Cloud Computing systems contain many disparate elements. For each element there are often multiple options, each with different externally visible interfaces, file formats, and operational conventions. In many cases these visible interfaces, formats, and conventions have different semantics. This guide enumerates options, grouped in a logical fashion called "profiles," for such definitions of interfaces, formats, and conventions, from a variety of sources. In this way, cloud ecosystem participants will tend towards more portability, commonality, and interoperability, growing the cloud computing adoption rate overall.

Cloud Computing Interoperability

Ok. Cloud computing is a reality. Looking at Google trends one can see how the interest started only on 2007 to reach its maximum between 2011 and 2012.

It’s really important to highlight that the trend starts to decrease when the interest for big data starts to grow.

Cloud Trends 2013

Cloud is becoming a reality. One of the biggest differences with the past lies in the fact that the decision makers are not any more only IT managers or CIOs: 40% are not-IT executives. This is because many already use cloud computing out of the office or they have already portable devices that come with default "cloudlike" software installed.  
Looking at an extract from the "CDW’s 2013 State of the Cloud Report" is really interesting to see which are main decision drivers to move to cloud computing.

NIST definition for SaaS, PaaS, IaaS

Software as a Service (SaaS) — The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email).

Pentest and Vulnerability Scanning – A simple list of useful tools

BACKTRACK
BackTrack is a Linux-based penetration testing arsenal that aids security professionals in the ability to perform assessments in a purely native environment dedicated to hacking.
METASPLOIT
The Metasploit Project is a computer security project which provides information about security vulnerabilities and aids in penetration testing and IDS signature development.
NEXPOSE
Nexpose proactively scans your environment for misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and malware and provides guidance for mitigating risks.
MOBILISAFE
Mobilisafe is a mobile risk management solution that automatically performs a mobile risk assessment of all the devices in your organization and provides easy-to-use tools to eliminate these risks.