Getting rid of all our servers and going fully cloud-based - good idea or madness?

[mavhc]

How does anything connect to the sql server?

 

At some point there's either a) a connection to your LAN/VPN, or b) a connection to the world, both are secured by a set of user passwords or similar. If it's only LAN there's a few computers than can connect, vs 4 billion for internet.

 

Depends what service you're using, and who you're letting connect, but a misconfiguration on your LAN is unlikely to be terrible, you're monitoring the pupils anyway.

 

Meanwhile https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/01/extortionists-wipe-thousands-of-databases-victims-who-pay-up-get-stiffed/

 

In general your internet accessible server is being scanned 24/7 by bad guys.

 

Other problem with this thread is "Cloud based" means almost nothing

[Blue_Cookeh]

How does anything connect to the sql server?

 

At some point there's either a) a connection to your LAN/VPN, or b) a connection to the world, both are secured by a set of user passwords or similar. If it's only LAN there's a few computers than can connect, vs 4 billion for internet.

 

Depends what service you're using, and who you're letting connect, but a misconfiguration on your LAN is unlikely to be terrible, you're monitoring the pupils anyway.

 

Meanwhile https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/01/extortionists-wipe-thousands-of-databases-victims-who-pay-up-get-stiffed/

 

In general your internet accessible server is being scanned 24/7 by bad guys.

 

Other problem with this thread is "Cloud based" means almost nothing

 

You're completely ignoring how cloud environments work in reality.

 

Virtual servers in all cloud environments ARE NOT open to the Internet by default. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon put network security rules in front of them. You have to actively go and make a bad decision to make a change (as you would on site) to open your services up to the Internet.

 

If you've opened your SIMS SQL database up to the Internet you can't blame the cloud for that, you only have your poor sysadmin skills to blame, just as you would on site. Of course, I'd hope if you were putting your SIMS SQL DB into something like Azure you would be using site to site VPNs.

[mjk]

How does anything connect to the sql server?

Via a proxy load balancer, behind a firewall, With no external access.

There is no way to access it externally, unless I want to do that - I'd have to go out of my way to have it externally accessed - much like an internal LAN and it's really not that much different from an internal LAN in that respect.

 

 

There are a lot of things wrong with cloud, but respectfully, I think you are barking up the wrong tree here.

[mavhc]

So it's just an extension of your lan, fair enough.

 

But half of the conversation here is: we put it on the internet so our users can access it anywhere, not just at school

[mjk]

So it's just an extension of your lan, fair enough.

 

But half of the conversation here is: we put it on the internet so our users can access it anywhere, not just at school

 

The database is and extension of the LAN, but clearly the webserver is accessible from elsewhere - the same as we previously did in school:

Before we moved it, the webserver was in an internet accessible DMZ and would talk to a database on the internal LAN - a pretty common setup.

Now the webserver is hosted in the cloud and talks to a load balancer/failover on in the internal cloud. The load balancer then talks to the database servers (high availablility,failover) on the internal cloud.

So it's a pretty similar setup to how you would do LAN servers now, except all the patching/security is managed by google.

[mavhc]

Sounds like a good setup, how many users is that for? Are you saving money?

[mjk]

2000 users. It's part of a longer term strategy. Ultimately we won't need to buy new servers so yes it will save, but I need to move more things across before it is cost effective.

[enjay]

Yes, someone could accidentally misconfigure something and make the server more accessible than it should be, but honestly, I think I'm more likely to have that accident than a security specialist at Google/Azure/Amazon. I suspect a Bad Guy Hacker is more likely to be able to unch through my school's firewall than Google's firewall, too.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

How does anything connect to the sql server?

 

What SQL server? I'm proposing not having any...

[mjk]

What SQL server? I'm proposing not having any...

Sorry I hijacked talking about my current hybrid solution.

[enjay]

Sorry I hijacked talking about my current hybrid solution.

 

Ah okay. Our current solution is hybrid too! I thought you might have got "stuck" where some people on this thread and my PMs have been of still thinking in a very Windows/AD/SQL way, rather than what we're considering.

[mjk]

Ah okay. Our current solution is hybrid too! I thought you might have got "stuck" where some people on this thread and my PMs have been of still thinking in a very Windows/AD/SQL way, rather than what we're considering.

I'll still need SQL for our Web server, Library system and for Google App Maker. I can't see any way around these apps at the moment so Cloud SQL is a good fit for us.

I think we could drop Active Directory and Windows fairly easily, but when a lot of web based apps require SQL it;s a bit harder.

[Edutech98]

About 2-3 years ago the trust I was at was expanding again and I thought about doing it but decided against it. If I was making the decision today I reckon I’d defo go for it! These are some of the things I’d also think about in addition to what has been mentioned. These aren't reasons not to do it, just bits to think about how you will manage it.

 

Governance – Instead of setting your own security and SLA you will have a greater reliance on contracts between the school and the cloud provider - how would you feel about that. Think about who will manage these and how, establish SLA’s and see how the cloud provider can achieve them. You’ve already mentioned this in another post, that this may be very difficult for Google, MS etc so you may not have a choice with them.

 

You will need to determine how you establish your responsibilities vs the cloud providers, for example who would be responsible for encrypting data etc. You’l need some method of looking at cloud providers compliance reporting such as audits, would this be the NM responsibility or SLT etc.

 

You’d need to think about information classifications – i.e what types of data can go where and if you’d have any rules in place to say certain types of info can’t be stored in certain apps.

Legal Issues – You would need to think about how you will comply with GDPR any other legal/regulatory bodies etc. Think about the location of the cloud provider, location of servers, what happens if agreements break down like with the EU-US agreements. Data is no longer protected by the boundaries of the LAN so you will need to think about the risks of data being transferred outside the LAN.

Think about who the data is shared with, who the cloud provider shares it with, who has access to it. You will need to think about how you would deal with security breaches of the cloud provider and who’s responsibility it would be.

 

Look into if there would be a cost of retrieval for data in achieve storage, i.e dealing with SAR etc and how much this would be.

 

Audit and Compliance – Your role would switch from less technical to more management. Rather than setting up infrastructure, you will be managing the cloud provider, ensuring SLA are met, monitoring agreements etc. Do you/your team have/want these skills over tech skills.

 

Business Continue / Disaster Recovery – sounds like you've already got this covered ref internet backup etc. Also think about how easy would it be to move cloud providers, ie if the service is no longer offered or you are getting bad services. You will need to see how granule you can set up permissions such as different levels of admin control. If you can’t you’l need to risk assess this to see what this means in practise.

You will need to think about incident response, how much access to audit logs do you have and who’s responsibility would it be to look into what went wrong. You will need to think about how will you secure data in the cloud (i.e proxy encryption, provider-managed encryption) and who’s responsibility it is.

Edited July 9, 2018 by Edutech98

[enjay]

Thanks @Edutech98 that's really helpful. I was conscious we'd need to look at the strategic and governance side too, but hadn't moved my brain past the technical yet. Your post is a good framework for the next stage.