Security Issues In Future It Infrastructure

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Abstract— Over the past 2 decades, the information technology infrastructure has gone through an exponential change with the introduction and evolution of new technologies and trends. Organizations previously having their data on-premise and their infrastructure comprising of multiple server machines on multiple server racks and dedicated client personal computers (PCs) are moving towards cloud computing & virtualization to smart phones and tablets. This rapid advancement and constant change, although increasing productivity for the organizations is resulting in a rising number of security issues for the organizations, their managers, IT administrators and technology architects. This paper discusses about the future IT infrastructure and its security issues.

Keywords- IT infrastructure; Cloud computing; Virtualization; Security of IT infrastructure; Threats; Mobile Devices

Introduction

IT infrastructure has been evolving and will continue to grow and advance exponentially in future. This continual change and advancement in the IT infrastructure will raise some security issues which previously either didn’t exist or were insignificant for the organizations. In this and future era of information and knowledge management; data and information privacy, integrity, reliability and security are and will be the most important aspects and a challenge for IT engineers, scientists and researchers. This paper focuses on cloud computing, virtualization and mobile devices (e.g. smartphones, tablets) components of the future IT infrastructure and its security issues.

ReSEARCH METHODOLOGY

This paper has been written using literature review analysis that forecasts and predicts the future of IT infrastructure including cloud storage & computing, virtualization and mobile device management and their security issues.

Future IT infrastructure components

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a model for IT infrastructure which provides ubiquitous, convenient and 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 minimum management effort or service provider interaction. [1]

The cloud computing model promotes availability and is composed of three service models:

Cloud 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, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings. [1]

Cloud 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 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 possibly application hosting environment configurations. [1]

Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

This cloud service model provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary 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, deployed applications, and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g. host firewalls). [1]

Virtualization

Virtualization is the simulation of the software and/or hardware upon which other software runs. This simulated systems environment is called a virtual machine (VM) or simulated network is called virtual network (VN). [2] In future IT infrastructure, organizations and IT architects will focus on improving the client and business users’ user-experience, achieving agreed service level, to utilize the full processing power of the underutilized servers and reduce the overheads of air conditioning and power consumption by multiple physical server machines. As a result, there will be an increased implementation of virtualization of IT infrastructure as it reduces the need for multiple servers thus reducing IT infrastructure deployment & maintenance cost and provides efficient use of the existing resources within the organization.

Mobile Devices

There has been a rapid growth of mobile device usage all over the world. [3] The increase in use of mobile devices (e.g. smartphones, tablet computers) is increasing day by day within enterprise as well as home users; as more advanced mobile operating systems (e.g. Android, IOS, BB10) and powerful productivity applications are now available and an increasing trend of "Bring your own device" (BYOD). By 2014, it is predicted there will be more mobile than traditional internet users. Interestingly, smartphone statistics indicate that 48 percent of users use their smartphones to aid in their work. [4]

security issues

Following are some of the security issues in future IT infrastructure components:

Service Reliability

In cloud computing, one of the security issues is service reliability. For-example in February 2008, cloud storage infrastructure of Amazon's Web Service (Amazons-S3) experienced a downtime of several hours that caused access issues and loss of data. [5] For mission critical data, small amount of downtime can result in a huge loss to organizations.

Data Encryption

Organizations have many sensitive data that they store on cloud and on premise VMs which is accessible through cloud and Virtual Private Network (VPN) on PCs and mobile devices. This sensitive data needs to be encrypted in case, an attacker manages to gain unauthorized access to that information cannot get advantage or misuse that information.

Inter-Network Dependency

Future IT infrastructure components of Cloud computing as well as mobile devices in enterprises needs always available internet. In order to access the data remotely through Virtual Private Network (VPN) on premise or on cloud needs always-on internet. This raises issue that what if internet service is down or unavailable, and what will happen to the client systems and critical business operations that needs to run 24/7 such as hospitals and financial institutions. In some developing countries, where there are power breakdowns and internet service is not considered to be reliable will face a risk of data unavailability. [5]

Unauthorized Access

Smartphones and other mobile devices will contain organizations’ sensitive information in the form of stored emails and documents that are vulnerable to leakage if the mobile device gets unauthorized physical access in case it gets lost or stolen. With the increasing trend of BYOD, there will be potential threats due to lack of control over such mobile devices.[6] Isolation between virtual machines can provide certain level of security through VPN tunneling and encryption,[7] but still there will be threats of intrusions and attack to the physical VM that will need to be addressed.

Conclusion

Evolution and advancement of information technology infrastructure will offers many benefits to the organizations but will raise some security issues that needs to be addressed in order to avoid financial loss to the organizations.