If you missed it, the 3rd Annual FedScoop Cloud Shoot-Out and Cybersecurity Summit was a big hit with government and industry leadership. I was honored to give the keynote, and I used the opportunity to talk about what we at Symantec consider the optimal approach to cloud security -- something we’re calling O3.
Given that it relates to security in the cloud, we equate O3 to the ozone layer. Just as the Earth’s physical ozone protects our clouds and skies from harmful radiation, our digital ozone protects cloud-based information from all manner of security threats. Think of it as a middle layer of management and protection that sits between the government customer and its cloud providers. The information passes in and out through the security layer, much like sunlight filtered through the ozone layer, to make it safe.
With an approach like this, we’re able to deliver better control (like a single sign-on and authentication point for each user) and better convenience (like total mobile device access, and gateways that integrate with existing information management tools). Plus, with centralized management, correlation and analytics are a snap -- which means better compliance.
In fact, we think O3 answers nearly all of the questions that government agencies have about cloud security, like “How do we govern across multiple, heterogeneous cloud environments?” and “How do we enforce access control across networks we don’t own?”
Certainly, the idea was well-received at the Cloud Shoot-Out. (People seemed to really like the “ozone” metaphor.) Now it’ll be interesting to see how this approach is used in specific government implementations. But that’s the great thing about a Cloud event: The sky is always the limit.