Azure Data Security and Encryption Best Practices

What is data security – you may ask. Data security definition is one of the most important topics when discussing hosting applications like a fixed book of ra in the cloud. The growing popularity of cloud computing has attracted close attention to security issues, especially in light of the presence of resource sharing and multi-tenancy. Aspects of multi-tenant and virtualization of cloud platforms call for some unique security methods, as well as data security and protection toolkit, especially considering such types of attacks as a side-channel attack (a type of attack based on obtaining some information about physical implementation).

After June 7, 2012, the Windows Azure platform cannot be called SaaS, PaaS, or any platform; now it is more like an umbrella term, combining many types of services. Microsoft provides a secure runtime environment, provides security at the level of the operating system and infrastructure. Some security aspects implemented at the level of the cloud platform provider are actually better than those available in the local infrastructure of protocol security. For example, the physical security of data centers, where Windows Azure is located, is significantly more reliable than that of the vast majority of enterprises and organizations.

Windows Azure network protection, isolation of the runtime environment, and approaches to ensuring the security of the operating system are significantly higher than with traditional hosting security requirements. Thus, placing applications in the cloud can provide security for your applications. In November 2011, the Windows Azure platform and its information security management system were recognized by the national data guardian data security standards.

The platform’s certified functionality included computing services, storage, a virtual network and a virtual machine. The next step will be the certification of the rest of the functionality of Windows Azure: SQL Databases, Service Bus, CDN, etc.

In general, any cloud platform should provide three key aspects of client data security: confidentiality, integrity, and availability, and the Microsoft cloud platform is no exception. In this review, I will try to disclose as detailed as possible all those technologies and methods that are used to provide three aspects of security with the Windows Azure platform.

• Confidentiality – ensuring confidentiality allows the client to be sure that his data will be available only to those objects that have the corresponding right to that. On the Windows Azure platform, privacy is ensured through the following tools and methods:
• Personality management – determining whether an authenticated principal is an object that has access to something.
• Isolation – ensuring the isolation of data using the “containers” of both the physical and logical levels.
• Encryption – additional data protection using encryption mechanisms. Encryption is used on the Windows Azure platform to protect communication channels and is used to provide better protection for customer data.certainly something that you can know with confidence is happening in the background.

Most Popular Methods – Symmetric Encryption

It is the simplest algorithm of social security. Cryptographers often call it the secret cryptography key (SKC) or general, since information is encrypted and decrypted using the same key. Symmetric encryption implies that the secret digital key must be known to both the recipient and the sender.

Asymmetric Encryption

This algorithm is widely used on the World Wide Web. It is also called Public Key Cryptography (PKC). The PKC algorithm uses two keys: public and private.

Open can be known to many. It is impossible to decrypt data using it. For example, an email address is a public key.

Closed is a secret, used to decrypt a message, never disclosed to the other side. For example, an email account password is the key to opening emails.

It does not matter which key is used in the first place, but both are required for operation.

Data can be encrypted using a public or private key.

Hash Functions, Hashing

Hash functions are database-level security algorithms that, in a sense, do not use a key. They are also called message digests or one-way encryption.

Using hashing algorithms, it is possible to convert large amounts of information into a string of binary numbers (bits) of a certain length (hash), which is difficult to imitate. Thus, hash functions provide a measure of the integrity of the transferred files. Two different messages containing different information cannot have the same hash.

The hash can be used as a digital signature or to encrypt and store passwords. The hashing method is a key point of blockchain technology. It mainly deals with protecting the integrity of data passing through blockchain networks.

Block cipher

It is a kind of symmetric encryption. Block encryption implies that each data block is encrypted or decrypted separately, and each bit in the output block depends on each bit in the corresponding input block, but not on the other bits. The block size is determined by the algorithm. In most cases, blocks usually have a 64-bit or 128-bit format.

Stream cipher

Uses symmetric encryption. Unlike a block where all encryption takes place simultaneously, streaming is performed one bit at a time. The conversion of open message characters to encrypted characters occurs depending on their location in the plaintext stream and the key used.

Autor’s Bio:

Thomas Glare is a writer from New York who specializes on the most in-demand IT topics in the modern world.