Firehost (see previous CloudAve coverage), the managed hosting provider with strong focus on security, today announced a new feature called “Security View”, available through the customer portal, which will give them a first hand view on how the company blocks hack attacks on the servers and applications. This allows the customers to gain better visibility over the level of attack on their applications and gives them a sense of confidence that their provider is doing a good job of fending off the attacks.
Firehost is not your cloud provider but they are in the managed hosting space by strongly focussing on highest levels of security to their customers. Security is in their DNA and their claim to fame is how they successfully hosted the famous hacker Kevin Mitnick’s website after his website was met with severe cyber attacks and many cloud providers refused to host his site. They confidently claim that they can be transparent about how they operate so that users can trust them with their mission critical applications and data. Last year, they took the first step towards this level of transparency by opening up the metrics representing the performance of the virtual servers through the customer portal.
Today, they announced a new feature, Security View, which will allow their customers to see blocked attacks against their websites and applications. Hacks can be seen by specific type, date, and originating region. Even though large number of such attacks on websites and applications comes from what we call as Script Kiddies, many organizations face attacks from sources that have malicious intentions to disrupt the business. By offering this kind of transparency to their customers, Firehost is giving their customers an opportunity to learn about these threats. Also, this level of awareness will help businesses position themselves publicly as security-conscious organizations.
Even though this news is about a managed hosting providers, there is something which cloud providers can learn from them. The key to cloud computing is trust. By being transparent about how they tackle security in their infrastructure, cloud providers can gain the trust of the users which will go a long way in not just gaining legitimacy for themselves but also help establishing trust on cloud computing itself.
