Cloud solutions

A model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.

Cloud is basically deployed according to 3 service models:

• 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). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, except for limited user-specific application configuration settings.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages, libraries, services, and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and the configuration settings for the application-hosting environment.
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer can deploy and run software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, and deployed applications; and limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls).

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is a non-profit organization formed to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within Cloud Computing and provide education on the uses of Cloud Computing to help secure all other forms of computing.

The goal of CloudAudit is to provide a common interface that allows organisations who are interested in streamlining their audit processes  as well as cloud computing providers to automate the Audit, Assertion, Assessment, and Assurance of their infrastructure (IaaS), platform (PaaS), and application (SaaS) environments and allow authorised consumers of their services to do likewise via an open, extensible and secure interface and methodology.

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