Cloud Computing and Security

Cloud Computing and Security

With

1. Unlimited Storage.
2. Immense Processing Power.
3. Improved Performance (with SSD).
4. Security polices in place

cloud is very tempting especially when it is going to save thousands of $

Apart from all the above, while preparing the strategies about what system we want to put on the public/private/hybrid cloud,  it provides us a fare chance to look into our existing inventory of the system and evaluates

1. what systems are underutilized/not utilized at all , and can be replace with the existing system.
2. is there any system(s) that have security gaps , if so it provides us a chance to close the security gap before putting that into cloud.

Cloud Vs Dedicated IT - Spending trends.

Cloud Vs Dedicated IT - Spending trends.
According to Study produced for Carbon Disclosure Project by: VERDANTIX , below is Chart of Money that Big Organizations going to spent on IT Projects for 2011-2020 .

From Chart it is very clear the cloud is catching up with traditional dedicated IT, and by 2015 total amount spent of combination Cloud technologies will be is more that Dedicated IT.

What is cloud ?

By Definition Cloud Computing are in essence online, super sized data centers containing hundreds of thousands of servers hosting web applications.


Cloud offers  - from raw infrastructure to complete business processes , and can be purchased through web interfaces and turned on and off as they per need (in nuttshell Pay -per - use , just like we pay for utilities). Only thing you need is a computer and internet connection.


Types of Cloud Services -

• Web-based cloud services.
• SaaS (Software as a Service)
• IaaS (Infrastructure as Service) / Platform as a Service.
• Utility cloud services
• Managed services

Benefits - with cloud 

Cloud Computing and Security offered by Cloud Vendors

Though everyone today ready to jump into cloud madness, but there are lot of concerns about type of services cloud vendors are offering,pay-per-use rate,data security,reliability etc , and out of all these concern one of the major concern is about security. While selecting cloud vendor companies closely review their security policies .Companies should make their own check list about data security feature they are looking from cloud vendor, though this list depend on the type of business/industry , but below are few points that I feel are important -

1.What are  the security policies for the data.

2.Where data-centers are located , are they located in safe location in terms of political stability or safety from natural disasters.

3.What are the date recovery/backup policies in case their is crash , and what could be max. downtime (if any)

4.How many people from the vendor will have access to your data , and how reliable those people are.

5.What type of SaaS software vendor is offering and again how safe that is, and what are their commitment to enhance those software.

6.With Major place like Google, workday, Oracle, amazon, Microsoft are jumping into Cloud area how committed is your vendor to remain in the market.

Major threats to Cloud

Major threats to Cloud

1. Hacking
2. Malware
3. Accidental data deletion.
4. Natural disaster
5. Spyware
6. Unauthorized access
7. Phishing attacks.

Source - BizCloud® 

Essentials of Cloud Computing

Though Cost Cutting the among the most hyped benefit of cloud computing , but it also has following benefits

1. Efficiency
2. Control over IT Cast
3. Scalability
4. Flexibility
5. Extensibility

Efficiency - In terms of automation of your Manual process at bigger scale.

Control Over IT Cost - with cloud there is no more need to over-buy  resources (Human /Hardware/Software) , as cloud  offers feature like Pay-per-Use Model.

Scalability - In terms of Upscale of resources at the peak time of your business , and down-Scale , when business is slow .

Flexibility - In term of providing you  ability to configure system and resources on demand , thus scaling systems up or down as needed.

Extensibility  - Hybrid clouds let organization extend the scalability of their private cloud temporarily through linkage to public cloud based on pay-per-use model.

Cloud Computing Strategies and Organization Standing

From Cloud Computing prospective we can divide the Organization in following 3 categories

1.Organization that has clearly laid out their cloud Strategies and working on various components of cloud (and they also have fair idea about how to assemble these components).

2.Organizations that are still evaluating and using virtualization/Storage and other components of cloud but has no vision and Strategies.They really need Internal Cloud experts or consultant to help them out to define the cloud policy.

3.Organizations that want to implement Cloud , but don't know what to do , these organization really need a leader who can take some initiative in this area.