TASK Read the DR Alarms case study in the Resources section of Interact 2 before attempting this assignment. You are an ICT Cloud consultant and you have been working with DR Alarms to advise them on...

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TASK


Read the DR Alarms case study in the Resources section of Interact 2 before attempting this assignment.



You are an ICT Cloud consultant and you have been working with DR Alarms to advise them on how to improve their data centre and move into the Cloud. The Managing Director (MD) has finally agreed that that this is probably the best approach for his company. But he is quite concerned that the company will lose control of their resources as they move more of the company's data and services into the cloud. The company is in the process of gearing up for a major order for their new IoT devices and have realised that their ICT system is not up to the task of supporting this new product line, and the level of sales and interest that it is generating.


DR Alarms is considering the following strategic proposal:


· They plan to initially move all their Web Services into the Cloud in order to provide an increased level of HA (High Availability) as well as a better degree of flexibility in supplying data to their customers and employees.


Their web services are running on the current Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers using Apache Tomcat


· They also plan to migrate their IoT design applications to the cloud in order to increase the application's flexibility and availability. The IoT design application suite will require:


a number of IaaS instances running Windows Server 2019


a number of PaaS instances for Microsoft SharePoint 2019 Enterprise


· The MD is particularly concerned about data sovereignty, especially for the IoT designs and the Intellectual Property (IP) that DR Alarms has in these designs. The MD wants to keep these data sets only in Australia and to ensure that they are securely protected.


DR Alarms is contemplating this strategy as a way to increase the company’s flexibility and responsiveness. DR Alarms expects to achieve significant savings by migrating to a Cloud based ICT infrastructure. They appreciate that this would entail retraining for:


· Their existing ICT staff so that they can manage the new Cloud based infrastructure,


· Their existing general and design staff so that they can start to work using a more secure environment.



Tasks:


Your task is to prepare a report for DR Alarms that discusses the following:



1. Describe the Cloud architectures you would employ to assist DR Alarms to move their existing web services to the Cloud?


a. Describe the architecture(s) that you would use to deploy their web services, along with your reasons for deploying this architecture. (10 marks)


b. Include a labeled diagram to show how your architecture would be deployed. (5 marks)


c. Describe the benefits, critical points and issues that would be the likely result of the deployment of this architecture(s). (10 marks)


2. Describe the major Information Security risks that you see associated with this new Cloud strategy. You should name and describe each risk that you identify, estimate its likelihood and impact and then describe a possible control for the risk. This should be presented in a tabular form. (25 marks)


3. Describe the general Information Security steps and controls that you would recommend to DR Alarms. You will need to explain your reasons for recommending these particular security steps.


a. What are the specific controls and steps you would recommend to protect the IoT design suite. (15 marks)


b. What are the specific controls and steps you would recommend to achieve data sovereignty for the IoT data and IP. (10 marks)


4. Discuss briefly what you would recommend should be included in DR Alarms' BCP as a result of their adoption of a Cloud approach. You will need to consider, as a minimum, the issues of application resilience, backup and disaster recovery in a Cloud environment. (25 marks)



You are to provide a written report with the following headings:



· Proposed Web Architecture for the Cloud


· Threat and Risk Assessment report for services and data in the Cloud


· Proposed Information Security controls for the Cloud


· Proposed BCP for Cloud services



Your report should have a word count of 5000 words ± 10%. Your report should provide references in APA 7th ed. format.



This assessment task will assess the following learning outcome/s:



· be able to compare and evaluate the ability of different cloud computing architectures to meet a set of given business requirements.


· be able to evaluate a set of business requirements to determine suitability for a cloud computing delivery model.


· be able to identify and design an ICT Risk Management strategy for a cloud computing delivery plan to meet business requirements.


· be able to critically analyse business requirements to plan a migration to a cloud model.


· be able to compare and critique Service Level Agreements (SLA) that meet the business requirements for a cloud computing plan


This assessment requires you to review a case study document on DR Alarms in order to complete a report to the company on:


The architecture to use to support their web services in the Cloud,


The major Information Security risks associated with their new Cloud strategy,


The controls recommended to protect their data in the cloud, and


The BCP that should be deployed to protect DR Alarms proposed Cloud services


You can find this case study in the ‘Resources’ area. This task is similar to tasks you may need to complete in a current or future workplace in the IT industry.


Please view the full details of the assessment, including due dates, submission requirements, marking criteria and standards, and the required presentation of your assessment in your Subject outline.


Please note:


Your report must use any headings listed in the assessment task.


You will be required to provide references in your report and these must be in APA 7th edition format.


Ensure that you meet the word count requirements of 5000 words plus-or-minus10% for the report. The reference list is not counted as part of the word count.

Answered 5 days AfterMay 08, 2021

Answer To: TASK Read the DR Alarms case study in the Resources section of Interact 2 before attempting this...

Deepti answered on May 14 2021
159 Votes
Contents
Proposed Architecture for the Cloud    3
Architecture Diagram    4
Advantages & Disadvantages    5
Threat and Risk Assessment Report for Services and data in the Cloud    6
Proposed Information Security Controls for the Cloud    13
IoT Design Suite    13
Risk Assessment    14
Asset Identification and Management    14
Identity and Access management    14
Device Life-cycle management    15
IoT Data and Intellectual Property    15
Look to the Cloud    15
Uniformity    15
Backup locations    16
Proposed BCP for Cloud Services    16
Application Resilience Issues    16
Business Impact Analysis (BIA)    17
Recovery Time Objectives    18
Incident Response Plan    18
Backup Plan    19
Additional Resource Requirement    19
Disaster Recovery Plan    20
References    21
Proposed Architecture for the Cloud
PaaS architecture shall offer additional building blocks along with the infrastructure, offering pre-built tools to the technical team in order to build and innovate. This will be a convenient option for the team to save time and money in migrating the web
apps to cloud in agreement with the intentions of the management. The target company has three system admins in IT department along with 5 in design team and the management intends to incur minimum additional expenses. IaaS architecture shall require the technical team to build the applications themselves from scratch over the Infrastructure provided in the architecture. Therefore, IaaS is not recommended.
PaaS is recommended for DR Alarms since PaaS providers shall offer additional services that will enhance the web applications, including workflow, security and scheduling which are among major requirements of the company. The company will be able to analyze their data using tools offered with PaaS. The team shall find insights and predict outcomes for better product design decisions, investment return predictions and other important business decisions. The architecture shall provide a framework which the design staff at DR Alarms can use to customize the cloud-based apps. They can avail the built-in components of PaaS to create apps and save time spent in building them from scratch. This model provides development and testing as a service. It will cater both IaaS VM running Win Server 2019 as well as PaaS database for MS SharePoint 2019 Enterprise. PaaS further offers high-availability, scalability and security (to some extent) that further saves the time of design team and system admins spent in coding those aspects.
A hybrid cloud type is recommended for DR Alarms. This will include public and private cloud computing services. Bathurst Data center facility shall be connected to application through the cloud. It will offer centralized automation and reporting engine that will integrate each cloud service and the applications. Public Cloud Computing services shall be offered by third party providers over the internet, increasing the availability to the company. The company can pay only per usage for the service it consumes. The provider will manage and maintain the system and save the company from any costs of purchasing, managing and maintaining on-premises hardware and app infrastructure. Public cloud hosted for the DR Alarm’s Bathurst office data center will eliminate the location and ownership issue. A private cloud with virtual private cloud shall be deployed for off-premise access at internal enterprise facility. This cloud computing architecture can be deployed quickly and offers infinite scalability. All the users can use the same application from the office from the device of their preference over the internet.
The proposed Red Hat Virtualization Architecture shall be deployed as a self-hosted engine with the target company. RedHat Virtualization Manager or the ‘engine’ shall be deployed as Virtual Machine appliance on highly available Red Hat Enterprise Linux hosts. This deployment is chosen on the basis of available hardware and business and technical requirements of DR Alarms. The manager will run as a virtual machine on self-hosted engine nodes in the same environment it manages. This setup shall require the following components
1. One Red Hat Virtualization Manager VM
2. Two self-hosted engine specialized hosts or engine nodes
3. One storage service
The IoT design application suite shall require IaaS instances running on Windows Server 2019 and PaaS instances running on MS SharePoint 2019 Enterprise. This would be done by using Microsoft Azure Migrate, creating and provisioning Red Hat Enterprise Linux VM in Microsoft Azure. It provides features located in centralized hub that can be used to access and migrate different workloads. The work load migration can be performed using MS Azure tools. The company shall use rehosting strategy for certain IaaS instances and refactoring strategy for PaaS instances. Azure migrate supports the strategy of Rehosting certain web apps. In rehosting, the existing apps shall be quickly migrated without changes, without risk and without any cost associated with code changes. The apps will be able to benefit from Azure IaaS scalability after migration. The strategy of refactoring or repackaging of the web apps shall allow the company to connect with Azure PaaS to use cloud offerings with minimal changes to the apps. This will require retraining the staff to enhance their development skills and explore the portability of the existing code.
Architecture Diagram
Advantages & Disadvantages
The major advantages of choosing this architecture are
Hybrid cloud will separate critical workloads from less-sensitive workloads of the company. The sensitive information about finances, customer data, alarm design data can be stored on private cloud and public cloud can be used for all the remaining enterprise applications. Hybrid Cloud on PaaS shall simplify the process of application deployment, management and scaling and allow increased productivity. It will streamline and simplify application management by abstracting applications from infrastructure and increase agility. Hybrid cloud shall further offer scalability when required. The company can expand the cloud presence as needed. The chosen architecture will help the company match its actual data management requirements to public and private cloud as well as company premise resources.
A Self-hosted engine with Red Hat Enterprise Linux shall provide High Availability with less overall hardware requirement. Cloud based servers or instances can be availed whenever required, they allow random IP addresses and DNS names and if they are terminated, they leave no trace ensuring the security of the apps. Auto-scaled instances will be automatically launched and terminated on the basis of metrics like memory availability, network or CPU load, etc. The instances are stateless and the data shall be securely stored on external storage services.
There are certain disadvantages of the proposed architecture. The information shall be stored off-site which will require scrutinization of data security. In order to ensure that confidential information is secured, the system should be private enough for the users. The current system infrastructure of DR Alarms will need various apps and programs to make the system cloud-enabled and integrate fully with each other for seamless business operations. With PaaS architecture, the company shall be dependent on the reliability, speed and support offered by the provider. Hybrid cloud will be difficult to implement. The company may be at risk in terms of cyberattacks as hybrid cloud could be misused by third-party vendors. The company will further require to invest on on-premise hardware to handle computing needs of private cloud, its maintenance and installation.
Threat and Risk Assessment Report for Services and data in the Cloud
    Risk
    Likelihood & Impact
    Risk Control
    Security Risk I:
1. Hardware support and Maintenance Risk
2. Legal Regulatory liability Risk
3. Reliability and Financial risk
4. Risk of activity tracking, visibility due to Shared accounts. Issues due to employee turnover
    No security fixes, end-of-life software, no regular patching of OSs, publicly accessible servers from Internet can cause these risks. The impact will be seen in terms of malicious access, data mishandling, data theft, etc. The company uses shared accounts, that is, same credentials are used to authenticate multiple users. Access is tied to shared resources of the company, severs, databases and network. Shared accounts are not monitored in current scenario. When a shared account will be breached, it cannot be tracked in the attack chain of the incident which user was logged in at the time of the incident. Another issue could arise when employees move around different departments in the company like design department and manufacturing department, etc. or when an employee leaves, the company needs to change the credentials every time. This will be tedious and will involve human error. Insider attack can be caused due to such account handling very easily.
    Company should update the obsolete software no matter how much expenses incurred. Company should buy purchase-contracts for updated hardware.
RedHat Virtualization security features should be enabled at tall times. An external directory service should be used to delegate authority to specific admin accounts and avoid sharing of single account
    Security & Performance Risks II:
5. Windows 7 Enterprise end-of-life software
6. Mac OS X security risks
    This software no longer receives security patches from the vendor. The business will be impacted since cyber criminals will be looking to exploit the software. The software are obsolete. They shall cause extended downtimes in running, back up and restoring when incidents occur. Upgrading of software will incur increased costs.
    Handling this risk shall require the company to invest in replacing and updating the hardware and software currently being used at DR Alarm. The company should discard obsolete components for better performance and reduced risks to the business.
    Security Risks III:
7. Open Access/ Data Loss/ Data Corruption/ Network Crash
8. Malware Attack: Ransomware, spyware, command control, etc.
9. Phishing Attack
    10. Financial...
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