Cloud Migration Strategy: Security & Management for Regional Gardens

This report provides a detailed analysis of information security steps and controls for securing a hybrid cloud environment, specifically in the context of Regional Gardens Ltd.'s planned migration to a microservices strategy and hybrid cloud. It covers essential aspects such as advanced threat protection, security scaling, cost optimization, security visibility, password management, browser security, access control, and encryption. Furthermore, the report outlines a business continuity planning (BCP) framework, addressing key steps like business impact analysis, security measure implementation, business continuity team management, and strategy evaluation. It also identifies potential issues related to application resilience, backup, and disaster recovery in a hybrid cloud environment, offering mitigation strategies. The document also touches upon remote server administration, resource management, and service level agreement (SLA) management, highlighting the benefits of cloud computing in managing organizational resources and reducing IT infrastructure costs. The report emphasizes the importance of these elements for Regional Gardens Ltd.'s successful cloud migration and operational efficiency.

Running head: CLOUD COMPUTING
Cloud Computing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
Question 3..................................................................................................................................2
Question 4..................................................................................................................................6
Question 5..................................................................................................................................9
Question 6................................................................................................................................12
References................................................................................................................................16

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Question 3
Information Security Steps and Controls for Securing Hybrid Cloud
Information security or simply InfoSec is the perfect practice for the prevention of
the unauthorized access, disclosure, recording, inspection, utilization, modification,
destruction and disruption of data or information. This information security could be
eventually utilized for the data form they are undertaking (Carlin & Curran, 2013). The main
focus of the information security is the significant balanced protection about the CIA or
confidentiality, integrity and availability of information and data. An efficient policy
implementation is easily done with the information security by not hampering the
productivity of the organization. This type of achievement is obtained from the multi step
risk management procedure, which eventually recognizes various assets, sources of threats,
potential impacts as well as vulnerabilities that are well followed by the proper assessment
of an effective plan of risk management (Hashem et al., 2016). For the proper
standardization of this particular discipline, all the users seek or collaborate in setting the
guidance, policies or industry standards over the passwords. Moreover, the antivirus,
firewalls, legal liabilities, encryption software and many more are the best information
securities in this process.
With the increment of laws and regulations that would be affecting the proper data
accessing, processing, storing and transferring, the entire phenomenon of information
security would be increasing the overall security of various organizational systems and
assets (Li et al., 2013). For the purpose of reducing the complexities of data loss and data
prevention, information security measures or controls should be implemented and
incorporated within the organization of Regional Gardens Ltd. Since, the organization of

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Regional Gardens Ltd. has decided to shift their business to cloud and Micro services
strategy and thus information security is the mandatory step in their business. This would
help them in enhancing their business to a greater level. The various information security
steps as well as controls, which would be securing the Hybrid cloud, are given below:
i) Security from the Advanced Threats: The most important and significant security
step or control for the security of hybrid cloud in the Regional Gardens Ltd is the proper and
perfect security from various and several advanced threats. Each and every storage,
network and the every computing environment are eventually secured and protected from
the several advanced threats (Krishna, 2013). These advanced threats are nothing but the
several kinds of dangerous and hazardous attacks, which are faced by the entire
technological and cyber world. All of these advanced attacks have become the core and
significant issues or problems for the company that are facing with them within their various
information systems or adapted hybrid cloud. This type of security is the very first step for
securing the hybrid cloud in Regional Gardens Ltd.
ii) Scaling of the Security: The next significant and vital step for information security
within the company of Regional Gardens Ltd is scaling of the security. This is majorly done to
change as well as amend to the new providers of cloud. The overall scaling of security is very
much vital for the specific organizational hybrid cloud, since this would be incrementing the
proper security. It must be perfectly done in the company.
iii) To Keep Low Operational Costs: The next significant and important step for
information security within the company of Regional Gardens Ltd is keeping the operational
costs much lower than others. All of these operational costs and expenses must be checked
as well as kept lower to provide organizational competitive benefits to the company. All of

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these operational costs should also be reduced for another significant reason for reduction
of the various complexities.
iv) To Get Optimized Security: Another important and significant step in securing the
information for the organization of Regional Gardens Ltd is to get the optimized security for
their business. The security of the information should be optimized properly for the
successful reduction of security related issues and complexities (Almorsy, Grundy & Müller,
2016). The deployment of the hybrid cloud and the various virtual environments eventually
need all the optimized networks and hence checking should be done. The several mitigation
strategies are taken in the process. This type of security optimization would be vital for this
organization and hence Regional Gardens Ltd must take the step for the company.
v) To Obtain Visibility: The next important step for security control for this company
of Regional Gardens Ltd is the obtaining of visibility within the hybrid cloud. This data or
information is hence protected or secured in the manner and thus the data storage never
makes any difference within the phenomenon (Yang & Jia, 2013). For this type of visibility,
the team of information security has the ability in noticing each and every vulnerability or
risk in the company and hence removing all the threats from the business processes. This
visibility was thus required to provide better competitive advantages within their company.
vi) Involving Passwords: The involvement of passwords is another important step for
controlling and securing the hybrid cloud of the organization. The passwords would be thus
required to provide proper security to the hybrid cloud and micro services strategy of the
company. They should incorporate several passwords in every sector of their cloud and a
unique username and password should be provided to every employee and client of the
cloud. This would thus reduce the complexity of data theft and data loss to a greater level.

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vii) Increased Secured Browser: The next important step for controlling the security
of the organization of Regional Gardens Ltd is to secure the browser of their organization
(Khan et al., 2013). Proper security measures should be undertaken by them to secure their
browser and thus reducing the chance of information theft to a higher level.
viii) Controlling Access: The access control is yet another important and significant
step in information security of the organization of Regional Gardens Ltd. The entry to the
cloud by the unauthorized users is checked by this step.
ix) Incorporation of Encryption: Encryption is another significant step in securing the
confidential data or information for the organization of Regional Gardens Ltd (Botta et al.,
2016). This type of encryption implementation would be extremely important for them to
secure the data to a greater extent.

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Question 4
Business Continuity Planning or BCP
The BCP or business continuity planning eventually refers to the proper creation of
the particular strategy with perfect identification of several risks as well as threats, which
could be faced by the organization of Regional Gardens Ltd with a proper assurance of
accurate security of the personnel and assets and also the proper ability to function for the
various disasters (Tao et al., 2014). This BCP or business continuity planning exclusively
involves each and every important risk or threats, which would be beneficial for determining
the procedure of the risks or threats affecting every operation of this organization.
Furthermore, various significant safeguards and security controls must be incorporated and
all the processes will be designed in such a way that they comprises of the capability to
mitigate every risk or threat. This subsequently results when the testing of every process is
done to ensure the major fact that these processes could be reviewed to make these up to
date. The organization of Regional Gardens Ltd must develop a particular BCP or business
continuity planning in their business. Any disaster has the ability of leading the failure of any
system properly. Various significant issues or problems are possible for the application
resilience, backup and DR in the environment of hybrid cloud (Alshamaila, Papagiannidis &
Li, 2013). There are some of the major steps in the BCP for Regional Gardens Ltd in the
proper adoption to the hybrid cloud as well as Micro services strategy. These steps are given
below:
i) The first and the foremost step in this BCP or business continuity planning in the
proper conduction of the analysis of business impact for their proper identification of time

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sensitiveness and several important business processes and operations and resources those
are important for the support of their processes.
ii) The next step in the BCP or business continuity planning is the proper recognition,
documentation and implementing the several measures of security for the perfect recovery
of business functions and processes (Wei et al., 2014).
iii) The third step in the BCP or business continuity planning within the organization
of Regional Gardens Ltd is to properly use the business continuity team and thus
compilation of the BCP to perfectly manage the business disruption.
iv) The final step in the BCP or business continuity planning for the organization of
Regional Gardens Ltd is to conduct perfect training of the business continuity team and thus
testing or exercising of the strategy evaluation is done significantly.
The various issues that are related to the backup, disaster recovery and application
resilience in the hybrid cloud environment are given below:
i) Slow Adoption of Cloud: The first and the foremost issue within application
resilience is the slow adoption of cloud. The cloud adoption is very much slower than the
others than the normal data protection strategies. Thus, protection of data or information is
majorly challenged in this procedure (Sanaei et al., 2014). The target of the traditional data
storage is then limited or restricted and hence the issue should be properly mitigated. This
BCP has the ability in resolving the issue without involvement of complexities by proper
segregation of various cloud activities.
ii) Slow Recovery of Data: The second issue is the slower recovery of data or
confidential information. Business continuity planning is much effective in this case as the

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several security measures should be present within this planning and hence making the
cloud safe and secured.

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Question 5
Remote Server Administration, Resource Management and SLA Management
The cloud computing technology helps in managing various resources. The resource
management can be eventually developed for the organizational resources whenever they
are needed (Rong, Nguyen & Jaatun, 2013). These specific resources can include several
things such as inventory, financial resources, inventory, information technology or IT,
human skills and finally overall production resources. Cloud computing is the significant part
of the information technology that is utilized for enabling the complete access to all the
shared pools of the configurable system resources and also the high level service, which is
being properly monitored or provisioned by minimum management effort over the Internet
connectivity (Whaiduzzama et al., 2014). This technology of cloud computing eventually
relies on the proper resource sharing for the purpose of achieving coherence as well as scale
economy.
The most significant advantage of this cloud computing technology is that the users
do not need to spend much on the computer maintenance and infrastructure. Rather the
overall expenses are reduced to a greater level. The total expenses of the information
technology infrastructure are eventually reduced or minimized (Arora, Parashar &
Transforming, 2013). In some of the companies, the companies even have the ability to
avoid this expense completely and thus providing a major advantage to all of them.
Moreover, the overall speed of the applications is subsequently increased with the help of
this particular technology.

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Regional Gardens Ltd has decided to move their applications and services to the
Micro services strategy and hybrid cloud. For this specific reason, the remote server
administration, service level agreement management and resource management are to be
properly conducted by them (Gupta, Seetharaman & Raj, 2013). This is also for the proposed
infrastructure as a service and platform as a service instances. Cloud computing has
emerged as the most popular and important computing paradigm for the purpose of hosting
larger computing systems or services.
Various techniques for resource management have taken into consideration, which
would focus on the effective sharing of various cloud resources amongst the several users
(Dinh et al., 2013). All of these techniques of resource management within cloud are being
designed for the applications of computing as well as workload intensive, having various
parameters of optimization. There are some of the major requirements of resource
management in hybrid cloud. The only important requirement in resource management is
the shared resources. These shared resources are extremely important as well as significant
for the infrastructure as a service and platform as a service instances. If these requirements
are not fulfilled, it is not possible for any organization to manage their resources properly
(Xia et al., 2016). Thus, Regional Gardens Ltd should check for their shared resources for the
resource management in their company.
The remote administration eventually refers to the specific method to control any
system from the remote location. The software that is responsible for allowing remote
administration has become explicitly enhanced as well as common to use when it is
absolutely difficult or impractical in using (Pearson, 2013). It is not always possible to be
physically present near the system for the purpose of using it. The remote location might

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refer to the computer or system that is not nearby. Legal as well as hacking or remote
administration is possible for the hybrid cloud. For this particular organization of Regional
Gardens Ltd, the remote administration is referred to the proper monitoring or controlling
any particular computer or system that is associated with the hybrid cloud or Micro services
strategy. The most significant requirements of this type of administration are Internet
connection and connection with the host computer. For the internet connection, the
systems should be properly incorporated with the connectivity of Internet, Local Area
Network or LAN or the presence of TCP/ IP protocol (Herbst, Kounev & Reussner, 2013). For
the connection with the typical host computer, the client should be connected with this host
for perfect connection with the organizational resources. All of these are required for the
perfect management of the remote administration within the organization of Regional
Gardens Ltd.
The third part is the service level agreement management. The SLA or service level
agreement is the commitment within the client and the service provider. There are various
aspects of the service. They are the quality, availability and responsibility. All of these
aspects are eventually agreed within the service user and the service provider. The most
significant element of the service level agreement is that all these services must be provided
to the relevant customer (Fernando, Loke & Rahayu, 2013). The various important and vital
requirements of the SLA management are cloud services and resources. This type of
agreement is helpful for any user in perfectly managing each and every cloud resources or
services within the infrastructure as a service and platform as a service. The perfect SLA
negotiation is again done in this type of network.