Expanding Maneuver Warfare in IT

Why the Cloud? Processing, Exploitation and Dissemination

By G C Network | October 23, 2008

So why is the intelligence community so interested in cloud computing? Three letters: PED (Processing, Exploitation, Dissemination). Take these two real life examples from the publishing industry. Jim Staten of…

World Summit of Cloud Computing: “Enterprise Cloud Computing” work group

By G C Network | October 22, 2008

To leverage attendees of the World Summit of Cloud Computing, a kick-off meeting of the “Enterprise Cloud Computing” work group will be held near Tel Aviv, Israel on December 3,…

Cloud Package Management

By G C Network | October 21, 2008

In his post “Missing in the Cloud: package management“, Dave Rosenberg highlights a critical issue in the adoption of cloud computing by government agencies. “I dare say that a standard…

PlugIntoTheCloud.com

By G C Network | October 20, 2008

Information Week has just launched PlugIntoTheCloud.com as their cloud computing destination. In his Non Linear Thinking blog, Bill Martin calls it a movement aimed at “providing a source and forum…

Is the cloud computing hype bad?

By G C Network | October 17, 2008

From Gartner “Why a little cloud hype might be useful“: “It’s too simplistic to say cloud hype is bad . If we are technically expert is might irritate us with…

Stop the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) !!

By G C Network | October 16, 2008

Dan Morrill! Count me in !! In his excellent article, “Cloud Computing is Scary – But the FUD Has to Stop“,  Dan makes some excellent points: It is time to…

IBM, Microsoft and Google

By G C Network | October 15, 2008

On October 6th, IBM launched their cloud services initiative. This is a:  “[C]ompany-wide initiative that extends its traditional software delivery model toward a mix of on-premise and cloud computing applications…

Government in the Cloud

By G C Network | October 13, 2008

Back in mid-September, there was quite a thread in the Google Cloud Computing Group on the use of cloud computing by the federal government.  Some of the interesting comments were:…

CloudCamp Partners With SOA-R !!

By G C Network | October 10, 2008

I’m proud to announce that the final SOA-R Cloud Computing Education Event will be held in collaboration with CloudCamp. Now dubbed CloudCamp:Federal, the event will be held as an “unconference” to help…

Federal Cloud Computing Wiki

By G C Network | October 9, 2008

With the fast growing interest in cloud computing, the Federal Government community has established a Federal Cloud Computing Wiki. This wiki is managed by Dr. Brand Niemann, Senior Enterprise Architect…

Earlier this week I published “Cloud Computing: The Dawn of Maneuver Warfare in IT Security” via Ulitzer. In publishing the article my intent was to explore the more dynamic approach to information security offered by cloud computing. Although the conversation continues in earnest, today I would like to highlight Ben’s thoughts from Iron Fog:
“What about managing virus outbreaks, patch deployment and vulnerability detection?
managing virus outbreaks – If I can scale my security infrastructure rapidly, I can scan my distributed filesystem and workstations, I can hunt down and remove infections – in theory I can scale my cloud rapidly enough to combat warhol-esque worms.
patch deployment – if I need to force patches across my environment, I can deploy a swarm of servers that will connect to every server and workstation in my enterprise and force the patch down (after I’ve spun up a multiple VM’s to test/socialise the patch against my standard configurations).
vulnerability detection – Scanning a class B sized network can take a while, but what if I can launch a few hundred servers and ask them to scan a less than a class C each, in parallel (note: this idea wasn’t mine, credit to Richard at Enomaly) – I can get near-realtime vulnerability intelligence on my environment at relatively low cost. Running a few hundred EC2 servers for less than an hour is pretty cheap, especially if compared against buying a whole bunch of expensive scanning appliances (then again, there’s nessus).”
These examples are perfect extensions on the idea of maneuver warfare in information technology.  His post also brings up some concerns that need to be addressed.  Let’s keep the ideas coming.
Follow me on https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson
Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

G C Network