Virtual machine security

Once the virtual machine is launched on the cloud platform, it might be exposed to several stakeholders for access. Usually, customers are provided full access to the virtual machine. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the customer to ensure the security of the virtual machine. 

A public cloud provider such as AWS offers web APIs to manipulate the EC2 instances. These APIs, when orchestrated properly using automation techniques, can provide easy scalability and elasticity for meeting the increased workload in high demand situations. Sufficient network access migration steps must be taken to restrict access to the virtual machines by configuring the firewall rules in the security groups. The virtual machine internal firewall rules should also be configured if required. For example, Linux iptable rules can be leveraged to increase the network access security. Similarly, Windows has a native firewall that can be configured appropriately to ensure that only relevant...