Book Image

VMware vCloud Security

Book Image

VMware vCloud Security

Overview of this book

Security is a major concern, in particular now that everything is moving to the cloud. A private cloud is a cloud computing platform built on your own hardware and software. The alternative is to deploy the services you need on a public cloud infrastructure provided by an external supplier such as Amazon Web Services, Rackspace Cloud, or HP Public Cloud. While a public cloud can afford greater flexibility, a private cloud gives you the advantage of greater control over the entire stack. "VMware vCloud Security" focuses on some critical security risks, such as the application level firewall and firewall zone, virus and malware attacks on cloud virtual machines, and data security compliance on any VMware vCloud-based private cloud. Security administrators sometimes deploy its components incorrectly, or sometimes cannot see the broader picture and where the vCloud security products fit in. This book is focused on solving those problems using VMware vCloud and the vCloud Networking and Security product suite, which includes vCloud Networking and Security App, vShield Endpoint, and vCloud Networking and Security Data Security. Ensuring the security and compliance of any applications, especially those that are business critical, is a crucial step in your journey to the cloud. You will be introduced to security roles in VMware vCloud Director, integration of LDAP Servers with vCloud, and security hardening of vCloud Director. We'll then walk through a hypervisor-based firewall that protects applications in the virtual datacenter from network-based attacks. We'll create access control policies based on logical constructs such as VMware vCenter Server containers and VMware vCloud Networking and Security security groups but not just physical constructs, such as IP addresses. You'll learn about the architecture of EPSEC and how to implement it. Finally, we will understand how to define data security policies, run scans, and analyze results.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
VMware vCloud Security
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Preface

Welcome to VMware vCloud Security. In this book, you will learn how to mitigate the security threats on a private cloud running VMware vCloud Director. This book will enable the reader with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to build a highly secured private cloud running VMware vCloud. We will also look at a detailed step-by-step coverage with screenshots, which are usually not available in Cloud Security product manuals.

You will learn how to configure and manage vCloud Networking and Security App, which is a hyper-based firewall. You will also learn how to use vShield Endpoint, which can help you to strengthen your cloud security by mitigating threats from virus and malware attack.

In the last chapter, you will learn some advanced concepts of cloud assessment for maintaining compliance standards that are available across the world. You will also learn how to run a data security scan and review the violation report that is generated by vCloud Networking and Security Data Security and take necessary action to mitigate those risks.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Installation and Configuration of VMware vCloud Director, covers installing vCloud Director and configuring it for first-time use. It also introduces security roles in VMware vCloud Director, integration of LDAP servers with vCloud, and security hardening of vCloud Director.

Chapter 2, Securing Your vCloud using vCloud Networking and Security, will walk you through a hypervisor-based firewall that protects applications in the virtual datacenter from network-based attacks. It also focuses on creating access control policies based on logical constructs such as VMware vCenter Server containers and VMware vCloud Networking and Security Security Groups, but not just physical constructs such as IP addresses.

Chapter 3, Mitigating Threats Using VMware vShield Endpoint, will help you to strengthen security for virtual machines while improving performance for Endpoint protection. It also talks about vShield Endpoint that offloads antivirus and anti-malware agent processing to a dedicated Security Virtual Appliance that is delivered and supported by VMware partners. In this chapter, you will see the architecture of EPSEC and how to implement it.

Chapter 4, Overview of VMware vCloud Networking and Security Data Security, will talk about visibility of sensitive data stored within your organization's virtualized environments. It shows you how to use reports from data scans performed by vCloud Networking and Security Data Security, and ensures that sensitive data is adequately protected. It also shows you how to assess compliance with regulations around the world. In this chapter, you will see how to define data security policies, run scans, and analyze results.

What you need for this book

You need VMware vSphere 5.1, which includes VMware vSphere ESXi, vCenter Server, any SSH Client (Putty), and vSphere Client. Also, you need the VMware vCloud Director and vCloud Networking and Security (vCNS) product suite.

Who this book is for

This book is a valuable addition for technical professionals with Cloud Security administration skills and some amount of VMware vCloud experience, who wish to learn about advanced Cloud Networking and Security products and where they fit and how to configure them as well to mitigate risks in the VMware vCloud based private cloud.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "To prevent loading it on the next reboot, the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\vsepflt key needs to be modified, and the value of DWORD changed to 4."

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

# /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/jre/bin/keytool -keystore
certificates.ks -storetype JCEKS -storepass vmware123 -genkey
-keyalg RSA -alias http

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Once you add the vCenter Server, you can see it under the Manage & Monitor tab.".

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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