Managing computer security services for cloud computing platforms

Abstract

A computer-implemented method of managing security services for one or more cloud computing platforms is disclosed. The method comprises receiving, by a main controller, a security policy from a client device, the client device being associated with a set of computing applications hosted by one or more independent, private virtual clusters on one or more cloud computing platforms, the main controller residing outside the one or more virtual clusters, each of the one or more virtual clusters to be served by a security gateway system residing within the one or more cloud computing platforms, the security policy indicating how threat intelligence data is to be applied to the set of computing applications with respect to a plurality of application scopes; receiving application data from the client device, the application data indicating whether a specific computing application of the set of computing applications has one or more application properties of a plurality of application properties, the plurality of application properties corresponding to the plurality of application scopes, the one or more application properties including a functional attribute related to a function of the specific computing application, obtaining a piece of threat intelligence data from a data source; mapping the piece of threat intelligence data to the plurality of application scopes; determining to which of the one or more security gateway systems to send the piece of threat intelligence data based on the security policy; transmitting the piece of threat intelligence data to at least one of the one or more security gateway systems based on the determining.