Cloud computing services offer many advantages for companies or organizations that make use of them. There are often financial incentives involved in cloud migrations, as the provider’s ability to use an economy of scale solution results in cost savings for their customers. Enterprises can engage cloud providers to enhance their computing capabilities with technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) that in-house resources cannot attain. The flexibility inherent in the virtualization underlying the cloud computing paradigm allows companies to fine-tune their requirements and only pay for the resources that they need.
Along with these benefits come the challenges introduced by having enterprise computing resources in multiple locations. It is not uncommon for an organization to have an on-premises data center and cloud instances housed by multiple providers. This puts additional stress on an Information Technology (IT) team trying to maintain high levels of availability and performance. They need to divide their attention between the various platforms used to deliver their solutions. It can be a hard balancing act to keep going.
Security is an area that demands a laser-like focus in any computing environment. Lack of cybersecurity can cause degraded availability and performance with the associated negative impacts on business. It also opens the gate for an organization’s data assets to be compromised. Security can be seen as the most important aspect of an organization’s computing resources. Without it, everything else is just a house of cards at risk of collapsing at any moment.
The factors that complicate security are the same as the factors that impact managing enterprise computing resources in the cloud. The split-screen nature of keeping tabs on multiple platforms and providers introduces additional possibilities for mistakes.
Read the 9-page whitepaper “The Complications of Cybersecurity in the Cloud” to learn about the complications of cybersecurity in the cloud, security risks of cloud computing, shared security responsibilities in the cloud, and best practices to ensure secure cloud environments.