Immutable Service Containers (ISC) are defined as an architectural deployment pattern for highly secure service delivery designed to protect virtualized environments. Sun Distinguished Engineer and Chief Security Architect Glenn Brunette discusses the ISC project in an episode of Innovation@Sun with Hal Stern, a distinguished engineer himself and VP of Global Systems Engineering at Sun.

Brunette discusses ISCs and how building them along principles of stronger security, greater integrity, and simplified security configuration and management is a viable solution for organizations looking to safeguard their virtualized environments.

In explaining the project's goal, Brunette says, "Essentially what we are trying to do is define the set of qualities and attributes that we’d like to see implemented in cloud or virtualized architectures in order to create really a security-reinforced environment in which services can run."

The way Brunette sees it, there are three things ISCs must do:

1) they need to protect services from unauthorized external influence

2) they need to protect the rest of the world should that service be compromised

3) they need to provide a way of promoting reliable auditing and instrumentation of the service so users know what is going on in the event there is a problem.

In the 14 1/2 minute podcast, Brunette explains how ISCs are working toward meeting those requirements as he and Stern sift through the following topics:

• micro-virtualization: how adding a thin management layer between the hypervisor and the service lends reliability to security enforcement and monitoring controls

• how "immutable" Immutable Service Containers really are

• defense in depth measures being taken

• current implementations with Solaris and OpenSolaris

• what's next for ISCs, including building core concepts into projects such as OpenSolaris on EC2 & the JeOS project; VirtualBox implementations; and integration of autonomic security techniques

More Information

Immutable Service Containers: Addressing Security in a World of Changing Deployment - Innovating@Sun

Immutable Service Containers and its OpenSolaris Instantiation

NEW: OpenSolaris Immutable Service Containers: - Glenn Brunette's blog entry

ISC Project on the Project Kenai site

OpenSolaris ISC - includes the construction kit download

Glenn Brunette on Immutable Service Containers

Sun BluePrints on Sun Systemic Security [...read more...]

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