Independent Lab Confirms Cloud Security

Independent test lab Broadband Testing and Spirent Communications say that they have allayed user fears about cloud-based applications.

A new report “Secure Virtual Data Center Testing” details how HP TippingPoint’s Secure Virtualization Framework solution is able to create a secure virtual data center environment. Moreover, security can be rigorously tested under “real world” operating and attack conditions using Spirent’s (News - Alert) cloud computing testing solutions.

 “Can we trust the cloud? The answer now is ‘Yes,’” said Steve Broadhead, founder and director of Broadband Testing. “Virtual security works in theory but, until there was a way to test it thoroughly under realistic conditions, solution vendors have had a hard time convincing their customers. Without Spirent we could not have done this – the testing proved not only highly rigorous, but also quite simple to set up and run.

“Testing a complex hard-wired system can be tough, but at least the structure remains static,” he added. “‘The Cloud’ is a good description from a network testers’ perspective of the relative shapelessness of the virtual environment. Until the test process itself could be virtualized, the cloud remained pretty opaque”.

Broadband Testing employed Spirent Avalanche Virtual, which was designed specifically for virtual and cloud computing environments. It was used in conjunction with Spirent Avalanche in order to test internal and external-to-internal traffic under normal operating and extreme conditions as well as a wide range of attack scenarios. All the threats in the HP TippingPoint signature base were successfully blocked, and the only ones that passed were those not yet added to the then-current database.