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Category:OWASP Cloud ‐ 10 Project
Main
Cloud Top 10 Security Risks
Goal
Goal of the project is to maintain a list of top 10 security risks faced with the Cloud Computing and SaaS Models. List will be maintained by input from community, security experts and security incidences at cloud/SaaS providers.
Audience
Audience for the project will be organizations planning on leveraging external cloud environment to host their applications or rent application in a SaaS model (Software as a Service). Aim of the "OWASP Cloud-10" list is to help balance security risks with the cost advantage that the Cloud and SaaS model provides. We expect the Cloud and SaaS providers to be indirect audience for "OWASP Cloud-10", when they try to showcase their security controls to potential customers against this list.
Initial pre-alpha list of OWASP Cloud Top 10 Security Risks
R1 - Accountability and Data Ownership | Pankaj |
R2 - User Identity Federation | It is very important for the enterprises to keep control over user identities as they move services and applications to the different cloud providers. Rather than letting cloud providers create multiple islands of identities that become too complex to manage down the line. Users should be uniquely identifiable with a federated authentication (e.g. SAML) that works across the cloud providers. User experience is enhanced when he/she does not manage multiple userids and credentials. This allows easier back-end data integrations between cloud provides. (Vinay) |
R3 - Regulatory Compliance | - Complex to Demonstrate regulatory compliance. Data that is perceived to be secure in one country may not be perceived secure in another due to different regulatory laws across countries or regions. For eg., European Union has very strict privacy laws and hence data stored in US may not comply with those EU laws. (Shankar) |
R4 - Business Continuity and Resiliency | - Pankaj |
R5 - User Privacy and Secondary Usage of Data | User's personal data gets stored in the cloud as users start using social web sites. Most of the social sites are vague about how they will handle users personal data. Additionally most of the social sites go with the default share all (least restrictive) setup for the user. E.g. via LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook it is very easy to deduct personal details of the users (Vinay) - Need to ensure with your cloud providers what data can or cannot be used by them for secondary purposes. It includes data that can be mined directly from user data by providers or indirectly based on user behavior (clicks, incoming outgoing URLs etc.). Many social application providers mine user data for secondary usage e.g. directed advertising. No wonder when many of us use their personal gmail/hotmail or yahoo account to tell a friend your vacation plans and immediately you start seeing advertisements on hotels/flights near your destination. (Vinay) |
R6 - Service and Data Integration | Organizations must be sure that their proprietary data is adequately protected as it is transferred between the end user and the cloud data center. While interception of data in transit should be of concern to every organization, the risk is much greater for organizations utilizing a cloud computing model, where data is transmitted over the Internet. Unsecured data is susceptible to interception and compromise during transmission. (Shankar) |
R7 - Multi Tenancy and Physical Security | Vinay |
R8 - Incidence Analysis and Forensic Support | In the event of a security incident, applications and services hosted at a cloud provider are difficult to investigate as logging may be distributed across multiple hosts and data centers which could be located in various countries and hence governed by different laws. Also, along with log files, data belonging to multiple customers may be co-mingled on the same storage devices and hence a concern for law enforcing agencies for forensic recovery. (Shankar) |
R9 - Infrastructure Security | -Vinay |
R10 - Non Production Environment Exposure | - Pankaj |
Other OWASP Cloud-10 Candidates
- exposure to non-prod and internal environments
- Integration between cloud and internally hosted services
- Patching and Vulnerability Management
- Lack of Transparency in Internal Security Controls and difficulty/complexity of auditing
- Enterprise Intranets exposed directly on Internet (if they move on a Public Cloud)
This needs to be debated and for each of these we may need to add a separate page-holder with the following details.
- Various Risk Scenarios
- Real World Examples
- Possible Mitigation and Security Controls
- Reference to any related Incident
Roadmap (Status)
Managing OWASP Cloud-10 List (Pre-Alpha)
“OWASP Cloud-10” list will be maintained by input from, community, security experts and security incidences at cloud/SaaS providers.
Each of the identified risk in "OWASP Cloud-10" will provide details on:
- Various Risk Scenarios
- Real World Examples
- Possible Mitigations and Security Controls
- Reference to any related Incident
Alpha State
Approach:
Criteria: a) Easily Executable b) Most Damaging c) Incidence Frequency (Known)
Top 10
Normalize Verbiage Describe
- Identify and publish a first draft of potential "OWASP Cloud-10" candidates (July 2009)
- Ask contributors to collect more data and details on each of the risk item. (till Aug 2009)
- Get initial community feedback by discussing it in various blogs, discussion forums etc. (till Aug-Sept 2009)
Beta State
- Publish the first (beta) list of "OWASP Cloud-10" (Oct 2009)
- Identify additional candidates
- ……. (repeat steps as in Alpha)
Taxonomy
Terms
Diagrams
Reference
Related Efforts
- Cloud Security Alliance - http://www.cloudsecurityalliance.org/
- IDC Aug 2008 Survey (Security #1) Challenge for Cloud/On-Demand Models - http://blogs.idc.com/ie/?p=210
Related OWASP Projects
- OWASP Top Ten Project
- OWASP Legal Project
Contributors
Project Leaders
Vinay Bansal
Shankar Babu Chebrolu
Pankaj Telang
Ken Huang
Contributors
Project Details
PROJECT INFO What does this OWASP project offer you? |
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Subcategories
This category has the following 2 subcategories, out of 2 total.
Pages in category "OWASP Cloud ‐ 10 Project"
The following 14 pages are in this category, out of 14 total.
C
- Cloud - Top 5 Risks with PAAS
- Cloud Top 5 Risks with IAAS
- Cloud-10 Accountability and Data Ownership
- Cloud-10 Incidence Analysis and Forensic Support
- Cloud-10 Infrastructure Security
- Cloud-10 Multi Tenancy and Physical Security
- Cloud-10 Regulatory Compliance
- Cloud-10 Risks with Cloud IT Foundation Tier
- Cloud-10 Risks with SaaS
- Cloud-10 Service and Data Integration
- Cloud-10 User Identity Federation
- Cloud-10 User Privacy and Secondary Usage of Data