Providing context-based visibility of cloud resources in a multi-tenant environment

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9444819-B2
Application number	US-201414156547-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jan 16, 2014
Priority date	Jan 16, 2014
Publication date	Sep 13, 2016
Grant date	Sep 13, 2016

Abstract

A secure tag generation service is associated with a cloud infrastructure. This service establishes a security context for a particular cloud tenant based on a tenant's security requirements, one or more cloud resource attributes, and the like. The security content is encoded into a data structure, such as a tag that uniquely identifies that security context. The tag is then encrypted. The encrypted tag is then propagated to one or more cloud management services, such as a logging service. When one or more cloud resources are then used, such use is associated with the encrypted security context tag. In this manner, the encrypted tag is used to monitor activities that are required to meet the security context. When it comes time to perform a security or compliance management task, any cloud system logs that reference the encrypted security context tag are correlated to generate a report for the security context.

First claim

Having described our invention, what we now claim is as follows:

1. An apparatus, comprising:
one or more processors in a multi-tenant cloud computing infrastructure;
computer memory holding computer program instructions executed by the one or more processors to perform resource security and compliance monitoring in the cloud computing infrastructure, the cloud computing infrastructure comprising a set of network-accessible computing machines and software executed by the one or more processors, the computer program instructions performing following operations:
for a given tenant, deriving a security context from cloud resource meta-data and user-specific input data, the user-specific input data being security requirements for the given tenant in the cloud computing infrastructure;
encapsulating the cloud resource meta-data and the user-specific input data into a data structure;
processing the data structure into a data string that securely and uniquely represents the security context for the given tenant;
propagating the data string for the given tenant into machine-based logs generated by one or more cloud resource automation services that monitor the cloud computing infrastructure;
associating the data string to activities associated with one or more secure resources as the activities are monitored by the one or more cloud resource automation services to provide context-based visibility for the resource security and compliance monitoring in the cloud computing infrastructure by the one or more cloud resource automation services; and
responsive to a request associated with the resource security and compliance monitoring, correlating information from the machine-based logs and that includes the data string to generate a security context-specific response, the security context-specific response associated with a tenant-specific compliance view.

2. The apparatus as described in claim 1 wherein the data string is a security context tag that encodes the cloud resource meta-data and the user-specific input data.

3. The apparatus as described in claim 2 wherein the data string is protected by a security wrapper generated by applying a given mathematical function to the security context tag.

4. The apparatus as described in claim 3 wherein the computer program instructions further operate to remove the security wrapper prior to correlating the information.

5. The apparatus as described in claim 1 wherein the computer program instructions further operate to update the security context and the associated data string based on one of: a runtime behavior, and an event.

6. The apparatus as described in claim 1 wherein the security context-specific response is a report detailing one of: user activity, resource usage, network monitoring, and workload execution.

7. The apparatus as described in claim 6 wherein the report is specific to the given tenant and the security context for the given tenant.

8. A computer program product in a non-transitory computer readable medium for use in a data processing system to perform resource security and compliance monitoring in a multi-tenant cloud computing infrastructure, the cloud computing infrastructure comprising a set of network-accessible computing machines and software executed by one or more processors in the cloud computing infrastructure, the computer program product holding computer program instructions which, when executed by the one or more processors in the cloud computing infrastructure, perform operations comprising:
for a given tenant, deriving a security context from cloud resource meta-data and user-specific input data, the user-specific input data being security requirements for the given tenant in the cloud computing infrastructure;
encapsulating the cloud resource meta-data and the user-specific input data into a data structure;
processing the data structure into a data string that securely and uniquely represents the security context for the given tenant;
propagating the data string for the given tenant into machine-based logs generated by one or more cloud resource automation services that monitor the cloud computing infrastructure;
associating the data string to activities associated with one or more secure resources as the activities are monitored by the one or more cloud resource automation services to provide context-based visibility for the resource security and compliance monitoring in the cloud computing infrastructure by the one or more cloud resource automation services; and
responsive to a request associated with the resource security and compliance monitoring, correlating information from the machine-based logs and that includes the data string to generate a security context-specific response, the security context-specific response associated with a tenant-specific compliance view.

9. The computer program product as described in claim 8 wherein the data string is a security context tag that encodes the cloud resource meta-data and the user-specific input data.

10. The computer program product as described in claim 9 wherein the data string is protected by a security wrapper generated by applying a given mathematical function to the security context tag.

11. The computer program product as described in claim 10 wherein the computer program instructions further operate to remove the security wrapper prior to correlating the information.

12. The computer program product as described in claim 8 wherein the computer program instructions further operate to update the security context and the associated data string based on one of: a runtime behavior, and an event.

13. The computer program product as described in claim 8 wherein the security context-specific response is a report detailing one of: user activity, resource usage, network monitoring, and workload execution.

14. The computer program product as described in claim 13 wherein the report is specific to the given tenant and the security context for the given tenant.

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Muppidi Sridhar R
• Bird William Alexander
• Iyer Sreekanth Ramakrishna
• Kumar Archana
• Nagaratnam Nataraj

Classifications

• H04L47/78

  Architectures of resource allocation · CPC title

• H04L41/28

  Restricting access to network management systems or functions, e.g. using authorisation function to access network configuration · CPC title

• H04L63/1433

  Vulnerability analysis · CPC title

• H04L63/102 Primary

  Entity profiles · CPC title

• H04L41/50

  Network service management, e.g. ensuring proper service fulfilment according to agreements · CPC title