Cloud Models & Responsibilities
In this cloud service model, the customer is responsible only for their data and user access, while the vendor manages everything else including the application, runtime, and OS.
What is Software as a Service (SaaS)?
A private, logically isolated virtual network segment provisioned for a single tenant within a public cloud environment.
What is a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)?
Unlike a virtual machine, this lightweight virtualization mechanism packages only the application and its dependencies, sharing the host OS kernel.
What is a container?
The fundamental core tenet that summarizes the philosophy of a Zero Trust architecture.
What is "Never trust, always verify"?
This industrial hardware component is a digital computer designed to automate electromechanical processes on factory floors and utility systems.
What is a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC)?
This cloud deployment model is shared exclusively by multiple organizations with common compliance, security, or regulatory interests.
What is a Community Cloud?
This software methodology uses machine-readable definition files and scripts to provision, deploy, and configure infrastructure components automatically.
What is Infrastructure as Code (IaC)?
This open-source container runtime engine allows developers to package and deliver applications into standardized portable containers.
What is Docker?
In the NIST Zero Trust model, this logical component evaluates identity, compliance, and risk telemetry to make dynamic authorization decisions.
What is the Policy Engine (or Policy Decision Point / PDP)?
These industrial control systems monitor and supervise large-scale geographic facilities such as power grids, water treatment plants, and oil pipelines.
What is Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)?
According to the Cloud Shared Responsibility Matrix, which entity is always responsible for data classification, governance, and accountability regardless of the service model?
Who is the cloud customer?
In a Software-Defined Network (SDN), this plane is responsible for making routing and security policy decisions regarding how traffic flows.
What is the Control Plane?
This type of hypervisor executes directly on bare metal physical hardware without an underlying host operating system.
What is a Type 1 Hypervisor (bare-metal)?
In the NIST Zero Trust model, this component actively intercepts, establishes, and terminates encrypted connections between subjects and enterprise resources based on policy instructions.
What is the Policy Enforcement Point (PEP)?
An operating system designed for embedded and IoT devices that guarantees processing and scheduling within strict microsecond timing constraints.
What is a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS)?
In an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) deployment, which party is directly responsible for patching and securing the guest operating systems?
Who is the cloud customer?
This architectural concept combines software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) with comprehensive cloud-delivered security services like CASB and FWaaS.
What is Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)?
What primary security risk emerges if a containerized application runs with elevated root permissions on the host system?
What is host operating system compromise (or container breakout)?
The transition from traditional perimeter boundary defense to protecting individual applications, assets, and identities is known by this term.
What is deperimeterization?
The graphical screen interface that allows human operators to monitor and interact with PLCs and SCADA controllers is known as this.
What is a Human-Machine Interface (HMI)?
An organization chooses a deployment where hardware resources are completely dedicated to them within a public cloud provider’s data center. What is this deployment model called?
What is a hosted private cloud (or single-tenant architecture)?
An application executes code on-demand in response to events without running persistent virtual machine instances, charging solely for compute execution time. What is this architecture?
What is serverless computing (or Function as a Service / FaaS)?
An orchestration platform used to automate the deployment, scaling, management, and network policies of containerized workloads.
What is Kubernetes?
These are the three primary pillars of Cisco's Zero Trust security framework.
What are Workforce, Workloads, and Workplace?
This foundational design flaw explains why legacy SCADA networks are particularly susceptible to cyber threats once interconnected with enterprise IT networks.
What is being originally designed as air-gapped systems without built-in encryption or authentication controls?