BIOS is the firmware that governs the physical initiation and boot up of a piece of hardware. If it is compromised, an attacker could have access to hosted systems and make configurations changes to expose or disable some security elements on the system.

When a key management system is outside of the cloud environment hosting the application, availability is a primary concern because any access issues with the encryption keys will render the entire application unusable.

Hex GBL is a reference to a computer part in Terry Pratchett’s fictional Discworld universe. The rest are not.

Representational State Transfer (REST) is a software architectural scheme that applies the components, connectors, and data conduits for many web applications used on the Internet. It uses and relies on the HTTP protocol and supports a variety of data formats. Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) are both standards for exchanging encoded data between two parties, with XML being for more general use and SAML focused on authentication and authorization data. Secure Shell client (SSH) is a secure method for allowing remote login to systems over a network.

Cryptographic erasure is a secure method to destroy data by destroying the keys that were used to encrypt it. This method is universally available for volume storage on IaaS and is also extremely quick. Shredding, degaussing, and demagnetizing are all physically destructive methods that would not be permitted within a cloud environment using shared resources.

Structured storage is designed, maintained, and implemented by a cloud service provider as part of a PaaS offering. It is specific to that cloud provider and the way they have opted to implement systems, so special care is required to ensure that applications are not designed in a way that will lock the cloud customer into a specific cloud provider with that dependency. Unstructured storage for auxiliary files would not lock a customer into a specific provider. With volume and object storage, because the cloud customer maintains their own systems with IaaS, moving and replicating to a different cloud provider would be very easy.

When a cloud service provider receives an eDiscovery order pertaining to one of their customers, the first action they must take is to notify the customer. This allows the customer to be aware of what was received, as well as to conduct a review to determine if any challenges are necessary or warranted. Taking snapshots of virtual machines, copying data, and escrowing encryption keys are all processes involved in the actual collection of data and should not be performed until the customer has been notified of the request.

The management plane will have broad administrative access to all host systems throughout an environment; as such, it represents the most pressing security concerns. A compromise of the management plane can directly lead to compromises of any other systems within the environment. Although hypervisors represent a significant security concern to an environment because their compromise would expose any virtual systems hosted within them, the management plane is a better choice in this case because it controls multiple hypervisors. Encryption and object storage both represent lower-level security concerns.

Within IaaS, where the cloud customer is responsible for everything beyond the physical network, the number of users on a system would not be a factor in billing or service charges. The core cloud services for IaaS are based on the memory, storage, and CPU requirements of the cloud customer. Because the cloud customer with IaaS is responsible for its own images and deployments, these components comprise the basis of its cloud provisioning and measured services billing.

The create phase encompasses any time data is created, imported, or modified. With any change in the content or value of data, the classification may also change. It must be continually reevaluated to ensure proper security. During the use, share, and archive phases, the data is not modified in any way, so the original classification is still relevant.

The CPU and memory resources of an environment together comprise its " computing " resources. Cloud environments, especially public clouds, are enormous pools of resources for computing and are typically divided among a large number of customers with constantly changing needs and demands. Although storage and networking are core components of a cloud environment, they do not comprise its computing core. Software, much like within a traditional data center, is highly subjective based on the application, system, service, or cloud computing model used; however, it is not one of the core cloud components.

The inter-cloud provider is responsible for peering with other cloud services and providers, as well as overseeing and managing federations and federated services. A cloud service administrator is responsible for testing, monitoring, and securing cloud services, as well as providing usage reporting and dealing with service problems. The cloud service integrator is responsible for connecting existing systems and services with a cloud. The cloud service business manager is responsible for overseeing the billing, auditing, and purchasing of cloud services.

SOC Type 2 audits are done over a period of time, with six months being the minimum duration. SOC Type 1 audits are designed with a scope that ' s a static point in time, and the other times provided for SOC Type 2 are incorrect.

Information rights management (IRM) technologies allow security controls and policies to be enforced on a data object regardless of where it resides. They also allow for extended controls such as expirations and copying restrictions, which are not available through traditional control mechanisms. Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), virtual private network (VPN), and Transport Layer Security (TLS) are all technologies and protocols that are widely used with cloud implementations for secure access to systems and services and likely will be used in conjunction with other object data protection strategies.

State notification laws and the loss of proprietary data/intellectual property pre-existed the cloud; only the lack of ability to transfer liability is new.