Regional Gardens Ltd: Hybrid Cloud and Microservices Strategy

This report provides a detailed analysis of implementing a hybrid cloud and microservices strategy for Regional Gardens Ltd, a gardening enterprise. It covers the selection of cloud architectures, specifically Platform as a Service (PaaS), and justifies its suitability for a hybrid environment, highlighting benefits such as faster deployment, streamlined application management, and cost-effectiveness. The report also addresses potential issues like BCP/DR concerns and inadequate SLA provisions. Furthermore, it identifies various security risks associated with hybrid cloud and microservices, including lack of encryption, inadequate risk assessment, compliance issues, and weak security management, and proposes mitigation controls for each. The document outlines crucial information security steps, business continuity planning, and considerations for remote server administration, resource management, and SLA management, as well as migration to AWS services, offering a comprehensive overview for organizations considering similar cloud implementations. Desklib is your go-to platform to access similar solved assignments and study resources.

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

1
CLOUD COMPUTING
Table of Contents
Introduction...............................................................................................................................2
Discussion...................................................................................................................................2
1. Selection of Cloud Architectures for a Hybrid Cloud and the Reasons for the
Deployment............................................................................................................................2
2. Benefits and Issues for the Deployment of the Selected Cloud Architectures..................4
3. Risks Associated with Hybrid Cloud and Micro services Strategy with their Controls......5
4. Information Security Steps and controls for Securing Hybrid Cloud.................................9
5. Business Continuity Planning for Hybrid Cloud and Micro services Approach................11
6. Remote Server Administration, Resource Management and SLA Management............13
7. Migration to AWS Services...............................................................................................13
8. Critical Points and Issues for these Steps.........................................................................14
Conclusion................................................................................................................................15
References................................................................................................................................17

2
CLOUD COMPUTING
Introduction
Regional Gardens Ltd is a specific organization, which is responsible for running a
number of gardening enterprises. This particular organization has a huge display garden,
which it would be opening for the purpose of public inspection various number of times in
one year. Moreover, all other infrastructures would be moved into the cloud (Dinh et al.,
2013). They have taken the exclusive decision to initially move their Web services within the
cloud for providing an incremented level of HA or high availability and the better degree of
flexibility or scalability for the purpose of supplying data to all the employees or customers.
The various security risks or threats that are possible for their selected Hybrid Cloud should
be mitigated on time.
The following report outlines a brief discussion on the implementation of cloud
within the organization of Regional Gardens Ltd. Various significant details will be provided
in this report. A specific risk and security workshop for assessing the risks, several methods
to control these risks will also be provided here. Moreover, the BCP or business continuity
plan will also be given here. All the cloud architectures for this organization and the most
suitable architecture will be provided here. Moreover, the critical points or issues will also
be provided here.
Discussion
1. Selection of Cloud Architectures for a Hybrid Cloud and the Reasons for the Deployment
There are various important and significant cloud architectures that would be helpful
for the organization of Regional Gardens Ltd (Arora, Parashar & Transforming, 2013). The
three significant types of cloud architecture models are Infrastructure as a service or IaaS,

3
CLOUD COMPUTING
platform as a service or PaaS and software as a service or SaaS. All of these cloud
architecture models are extremely important for any organization as they help to reduce the
complexities of cloud services to a greater level. Regional Gardens Ltd. have decided to shift
to the hybrid cloud model. Hence they should be selecting such cloud architectures that are
the most suitable for their hybrid cloud approach (Fernando, Loke & Rahayu, 2013). The
proposed cloud architecture for the organization of Regional Gardens Ltd for their hybrid
cloud is PaaS or platform as a service.
PaaS or platform as a service is the platform based category of the various cloud
computing services, which is responsible for providing the platform and enabling the clients
or customers for developing, running and finally managing all the applications without any
type of complexity to build or maintain the basic infrastructure associated with the
development as well as launching of the application (Hashem et al., 2015). This platform as a
service could be eventually delivered in three ways. They are as a typical public cloud service
from the provider, where the consumer has the capability in controlling the software
deployment with minimum options of configuration and providing various networks,
operating system, storage and servers. The second method for delivering a platform as a
service is as a private service like appliance or software within the firewall and the final
method is as the software that is being deployed on any public IaaS or infrastructure as a
service. The main reason for proposing platform as a service is that it could be easily
implemented within the hybrid cloud. Since, they have decided to shift to hybrid cloud; PaaS
would be the bezst optrion for the organization of Regional Gardens Ltd (Li et al., 2013). The
best example of platform as a service model or PaaS model is AWS or Amazon Web Services.
Hence, PaaS should be selected by this organization.

4
CLOUD COMPUTING
2. Benefits and Issues for the Deployment of the Selected Cloud Architectures
There are various benefits as well as issues for deploying the platform as a service
within the organization of Regional Gardens Ltd. The major benefits for selecting this cloud
architecture are given below:
i) Faster in Nature: The first and the foremost advantage of the deployment of
platform as a service or PaaS is that it is extremely faster in nature. All the applications
would be eventually functioning properly as the service offerings (Garg, Versteeg & Buyya,
2013). Each and every hybrid platform as a service subsequently simplifies the entire
procedure of the deployment of applications, scaling and management is checked with the
help of this platform as a service. The developer productivity is properly incremented with
this process.
ii) Streamlining Application Management: The second important benefit of the
hybrid platform as a service is the proper streamlining of application management. For any
hybrid cloud, streamlining of the application management is mandatory and hence should
be done even for the organization of Regional Gardens Ltd (Xiao, Song & Chen, 2013).
Moreover, it helps to gain competitive advantages and access the information technology
infrastructure properly.
iii) Reduction of Complexities and Increment of Agility: The next important
advantages of the hybrid platform as a service cloud architecture is that it helps to reduce
the complexities to a greater level and the agility is eventually increased or incremented
(Rittinghouse & Ransome, 2016). The inheritable cloud architecture is checked in this
phenomenon and thus should be checked properly.

5
CLOUD COMPUTING
iv) Cost Effective: The next important advantage of this hybrid platform as a service
cloud architecture for the organization of Regional Gardens Ltd is that it is extremely cost
effective and hence could be easily afforded by everyone (Hashizume et al., 2013).
In spite of having all these advantages, there are some of the most significant risks
that are vulnerable for the hybrid platform as a service cloud architecture model. The major
risks are given below:
i) BCP and DR: The first and the foremost disadvantage of the hybrid platform as a
service cloud architecture model for the organization of Regional Gardens Ltd is the
business continuity planning and disaster recovery with the vendor of this platform as a
service (Jain & Paul, 2013). Both of these planning are extremely important for this
particular organization and these are eventually absent within the selected cloud
architecture model.
ii) Lack of SSDLC: Another significant risk within the cloud architecture model of
hybrid platform as a service is that it does not comprise of the secure software development
process life cycle or SSDLC (Yang & Jia, 2013). Due to the absence of secure software
development process life cycle, insecure code occurs within the architecture model.
iii) Lack of Adequate Provisions in SLA: The next risk within the cloud architecture
model is the lack of sufficient provisions in SLA. This is a major security concern for the users
of the cloud and thus Regional Gardens Ltd can be affected in the process.
3. Risks Associated with Hybrid Cloud and Micro services Strategy with their Controls
The hybrid cloud and the micro services strategy are always vulnerable to various
types of security risks and threats for their organization (Krishna, 2013). However, all these

6
CLOUD COMPUTING
risks and threats could be easily mitigated with the help of various mitigation controls. The
several risks or threats that are vulnerable for the hybrid cloud and the micro services
strategy with the mitigation and security controls are given below:
Security Risks
or Threats
Description of the Risks Mitigation or Control of the Risks
1. Lack of
Encryption
This is the most dangerous security risk for
the hybrid cloud and the micro services
strategy (Herbst, Kounev & Reussner, 2013).
The network transmissions that is
vulnerable for man in the middle as well as
eavesdropping attacks by means of
impersonating endpoints. There are two
types of algorithms in encryption. They are
symmetric key and asymmetric key
algorithms.
The only way to control or fix this
type of attack is the shield
transmissions from various random
attacks with the cryptographic
protocols including endpoint
authentication (Wei et al., 2014).
The employment of a reliable VPN
is another way to mitigate this
problem.
2. Inadequate
Security Risk
Assessment
The second important security risk or threat
is the inadequate security risk assessment.
The administrators of the network are
unable determine how and where the
intrusion is occurring (Rong, Nguyen &
Jaatun, 2013). Moreover, the future
breaches could not be prevented easily.
This particular type of security risk
or threat could be easily mitigated
by a proper risk prevention and
assessment. The IDS or IPS systems
must scan for the malicious traffic
or activities.
3. Lack of
Compliance
The hybrid clouds eventually need more for
the diligence, especially if it comes for
compliance (Botta et al., 2016). The
The only method to mitigate this
particular problem is by
coordinating the two clouds

7
CLOUD COMPUTING
maintenance as well as demonstration of
compliance is much difficult for the hybrid
cloud as data moves back and forth.
properly and the private and the
public cloud could be easily kept in
compliance (Gupta, Seetharaman &
Raj, 2013).
4. Weak
Security
Management
The lack of authentication is yet another
important issue in hybrid cloud and micro
services strategy. This is mainly because the
various cloud security protocols are not
integrated in this type of cloud (Almorsy,
Grundy & Müller, 2016).
The easiest method to mitigate this
type of issue is to replicate various
controls for both the controls.
Moreover, proper synchronization
of security of the data should be
done and this would help in
mitigation of all these risks
properly.
5. Poor Data
Redundancy
Another important and significant security
risk or threat is the poor data redundancy.
The lack of redundancy subsequently puts
the hybrid IT cloud at major risk and hence
the distribution of data should be done
properly.
The redundancy should be
implemented and this could be
done wither by using multiple data
centres from any one cloud
provider (Xiao & Xiao, 2013).
Furthermore, this could also be
implemented from various
providers of public cloud.
6. Failure in
Authentication
and
Identification
The next important security risk or threat in
the hybrid cloud and micro services strategy
for the organization of Regional Gardens Ltd
is the failure in proper authentication and
proper identification.
This issue could be easily fixed by
proper monitoring and verification
of every access permission and by
simply synchronization of data
security.
7. Unprotected This is again one of the most important The only way to mitigate this type

8
CLOUD COMPUTING
Application
Programming
Interfaces
security risks for the hybrid cloud of
Regional Gardens Ltd (Whaiduzzaman et al.,
2014). The end points of APIS or application
programming interfaces eventually expose
all the sensitive data to the malicious attacks
and thus exploiting the authorization and
authentication token for manipulation of
personal information or data.
of security risk or threat is by
handling the API keys similar as
encryption as well as code signing
keys (Sanaei et al., 2014). The third
party developers should e sure of
handling all these keys properly.
8. Denial of
Service
Attacks
The perpetrator or attacker makes the
machine or system completely unavailable
for all the authorized users and thus they
are unable to access the shared resources
like RAM or CPU properly (Tao et al., 2014).
Moreover, the attackers can also affect the
network bandwidth.
The denial of service or DoS attacks
could be easily mitigated with the
help of flow analytics. This would
eventually react to the incursion
and hence redirecting the traffic to
the mitigation device.
9. Poor IP
Protection
This is again one of the most important
security risk or threat for the organization of
Regional Gardens Ltd. It does not comprise
of high encryption as well as security
protocol within place. The proper
identification or classification could not be
done for this security risk.
This particular security risk or
threat could be mitigated by the
inadequate automated systems for
quantifying the risks (O’Driscoll,
Daugelaite & Sleator, 2013).
Furthermore, the source of the
threats should be known by the IT
team of the organization. The
network infrastructure should also
be made safe and secured.
10. Failure to This is the next significant security risk or This type of security risk or threat

9
CLOUD COMPUTING
Communicate
with the Cloud
Provider
threat to the hybrid cloud and micro
services strategy (Avram, 2014). The cloud
vendors should be vetted for the security
controls while they are handling the data.
could be mitigated by te verification
of data ownership as well as
security. The vendors of the hybrid
cloud do not have the ability in
providing reasonable ownership
expectations.
4. Information Security Steps and controls for Securing Hybrid Cloud
Information security is the proper practice to prevent the unauthorized access,
disclosure, utilization, destruction, modification, or recording the information. The various
information security steps or controls for proper security of the hybrid cloud are given
below:
i) Security from Advanced Threats: The first and the foremost information security
step and control to properly secure the hybrid cloud of the organization of Regional Gardens
Ltd is the proper security from the advanced threats. The network, storage as well as the
computing environments is properly protected from the various advanced threats (Khan et
al., 2013). The advanced threats eventually refer to the various types of dangerous attacks
that are taken by the world. These attacks often become a major issue for the organization,
who are dealing with them in their information systems and hybrid cloud. The security from
the advanced threats is the most significant and important requirement in the hybrid cloud.
Thus this would be the first step for the organization of Regional Gardens Ltd for eventually
securing their hybrid cloud.

10
CLOUD COMPUTING
ii) Scaling of Security: The second important and significant information security step
and control for perfectly securing the hybrid cloud of the organization of Regional Gardens
Ltd is the proper scaling of security for changing or adding the newer cloud providers (Carlin
& Curran, 2013). This security scaling is extremely important for this particular
organizational hybrid cloud as this would increase the security properly. The scaling of
security should be done by this organization.
iii) Keeping Operational Costs Lower: The third important step for the organization
of Regional Gardens Ltd to mitigate or control their security risks and controlling the hybrid
cloud is to keep the operational costs or expenses lower than usual (Oliveira, Thomas &
Espadanal, 2014). These operational costs should be checked or kept lower for the
betterment of the organization and thus the organization would be getting organizational
benefits eventually. These operational expenses could be kept lower by means of reducing
the complexities eventually.
iv) Getting Optimized Security: Another important information security step and
control is to get the optimized security. The hybrid deployments and the virtual
environments require this optimized networks eventually and thus should be properly
checked and basic mitigation strategies should be undertaken (Alshamaila, Papagiannidis &
Li, 2013). This optimization of security is extremely important for any organization. Thus,
Regional Gardens Ltd. should take up this step within their organization.
v) Obtaining Visibility: The fifth significant and important security control for the
organization of Regional Gardens Ltd is to obtain visibility within their hybrid cloud. The data
is thus protected in this manner and the storage of the data does not make any difference in
the phenomenon (Xia et al., 2016). Due to the visibility, the IT security team is able to notice

11
CLOUD COMPUTING
all the vulnerabilities or threats within the organization and thus mitigating each and every
risk or threat for the organization. This type of visibility is eventually for the betterment of
the security of the organization and hence is termed as the best of all.
5. Business Continuity Planning for Hybrid Cloud and Micro services Approach
Business continuity planning or BCP is the successful creation of any particular
strategy with the perfect identification of several security risks or threats, which are faced
by the organization with an assurance that all of their assets or personnel are properly safe
and secured and also have the ability to function in disasters (Pearson, 2013). This type of
planning involves the several important risks, which would be determining the procedure of
the risks, affecting every operation of the business. Various safeguards are also
implemented in this process and all these processes are designed to mitigate every security
risk. The processes are then tested properly to ensure that these processes are upgraded.
Regional Gardens Ltd. must develop a specific BCP in their business for reducing the
disasters of the system properly. Various issues are present within the hybrid cloud for
backup, disaster recovery and application resilience. The steps of the BCP of this
organization are given below:
i) The first and the foremost step of the BCP is to conduct the business impact
analysis for perfect recognition of time sensitiveness and several critical business processes
and resources that are supporting all the processes (Dinh et al., 2013).
ii) The next important step of the BCP is the proper recognition, documentation as
well as final implementation of the several security measures to properly recover from the
threats.