If for a moment we consider the concept of cloud computing as a fad what does that mean?smokescreen A fad being something that appears and then quickly fades from view and is only talked about by late night comedians (remember cloud – those were the days). Cloud isn’t a fad but it is no longer the cool topic of technology. Now the cool topic is Big Data and in particular as a friend of mine always points out Data Analytics. Big data isn’t big always. A great definition of big data is more data than you can process in the time you need to process the data to get the answer.
Cloud has become more mainstream now then it was 3 or 5 years ago.
People routinely now consider cloud options as the first option with less consideration of all the components now except security. Its interesting to me that security remains the number one concern many companies have with cloud solutions. The first thing is that security isn’t something that isn’t always moving. So you can’t really in the end say that just because something is somewhere it is more or less secure. Reality and time say that anything physical is less secure today than the day it was designed and the first day of construction. Over time hacks are found. Over time people find bad code that allows them to attack the solution.
Cloud does give you the fluidity to change the overall system on the fly more quickly. It allows you to reduce the reliance on physical hardware and embrace the new world order of virtual machines. Actually it isn’t a world order its just a way to more effectively to less reliance on physical hardware. But security isn’t just physical hardware. Certainly leveraging the three g’s you can create physical security as an aspect of what you do (guards, gates and guns).
Cloud, for the most part also gives you a chance to try the solution and play with it and if you don’t like it throw it away and start over. Still in the end there is that nagging question of security. I have argued for a long time that a cloud service provider probably does a pretty good job of protecting their network. Why? Because in the end they get attacked all the time. They get every attack in the books because they run that gamut of offering every type of service. Over time their security teams get pretty good at what they are doing.
It remains however the first thing thrown out in a meeting where a customer or client is considering cloud.
Perhaps it’s a smoke screen?
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