We are announcing Symantec O3 early access program, a new approach to securing enterprise clouds. But what is Symantec O3 really about? No doubt, cloud is an inexorableIT trend. However, CIOs and CISOs often cite security as a major concern. That is not to say that the new cloud platforms are fundamentally more insecure than the computing platforms that preceded them. Quite the opposite, cloud-oriented architectures have the potential to provide stronger security than most IT organizations can achieve today.

Nevertheless, SaaS applications and cloud infrastructures challenge in their own way IT’s fundamental function of defining and enforcing consistent security policies across devices, users, and information. The new cloud platforms directly conflict with the need for enterprises to establish consistent risk profiles and compliance postures. The shift to the cloud is eroding our traditional controls. Network-based security is no longer as effective since the network is no longer ours The network and its controls now belong to Salesforce, Amazon or Google.

The shift to the cloud raises a fundamental question regarding the role of tomorrow’s IT. If IT can outsource desktops, applications and infrastructures operations, can IT also outsource the governance of corporate digital policies? The answer is simple. IT should no have to embrace the cloud at the cost of renouncing its “raison d’être”! We ought to be able to embrace the clouds without relinquishing the control of our own security policies.

This need to layer IT driven security independently of cloud providers drives the emergence of a new security control point. The new control point must act as a “cloud firewall.” Unlike it sibling, the cloud firewall inspects outbound traffic. It is not network-centric but web-centric since Web protocols are the clouds lingua franca. The security gateway leverages identity and access control to initiate itself between all user devices (fixed or mobile) and clouds infrastructures (private or public). It creates a new layer of IT security and governance. By virtue of being inline with cloud traffic, the cloud firewall is context aware (identity, device type, location, time, etc). It is also be content-aware, providing information security through the deep inspection of HTTP streams and the application of DLP, encryption and tokenization technologies. Indeed, the cloud firewall has complete visibility. It feeds cloud access and information events into log management systems that can now correlate security information across internal and external systems across managed and unmanaged devices.

At a time where pundits are claiming the deperimeterization of the network, it is time to reinvent a new form of perimeter for the cloud. Delivering on such vision will take no less than the leading security company. The cloud firewall is the cornerstone of tomorrow’s IT security. So, long live Symantec O3, the catalyst for a new form of perimeter security, a perimeter for the cloud.

[Cross-posted at Blue Ocean]