Cloud computing and data security
Cloud computing is changing the way IT is delivered to businesses and how businesses can now leverage technologies to be very nimble and agile, yet big. The cloud is a technology that maintains data and applications using the Internet and central remote servers. Cloud computing allows users to run the necessary applications without having to install software or hardware. Consumers can access their necessary files on any remote computer that has Internet access. This technology is useful as it facilitates efficient computing through central storage, memory, processing, and bandwidth.
Cloud computing can be divided into three components:
• “Request”
• “Storage”
• “Connectivity”.
Each segment has a different purpose and offers different products for companies and individuals around the world.
Cloud computing has two main deployment models. Is it so:
• Community Cloud – In this Cloud concept, several organizations from a specific community with common concerns share infrastructure with each other. They can be managed internally or by a third party and hosting can be internal or external. The costs they have are distributed among fewer users.
• Public Cloud – This Cloud concept is established when it comes to several organizations that have similar requirements and seek to share infrastructure. This is definitely more viable in terms of monetary benefit, since the resources (storage, workstations) used and shared in the community are used by a large number of consumers.
The advantages of the Cloud Computing offer in IT services include the following:
1. IT transformation as a service on demand
2. Greater business agility, provisioning on demand
3. Self-provisioning and application deployment
4. Significant total cost of operations savings through right sizing and operational efficiency
5. Dynamic capacity on demand to reduce time to market
6. Strategically align the business on long-term opportunities while optimizing operations
However, the transition to the cloud is accompanied by a number of data security issues that need to be addressed. Most organizations use relational databases to store their most sensitive data, making the need for data security when moving to the cloud even more important and imperative. Therefore, as consumers work on migrating applications to the cloud, they should be careful about the three main attributes related to data security.
1. User access privileges: Any sensitive data that is processed outside the company is prone to elemental risk. Because the services are outsourced, they somewhat discount the physical, logical, and personnel regulations that IT departments might exert on internal programs.
2. Server Elasticity: One of the key benefits of cloud computing is flexibility. Therefore, leaving aside the fact that users know the exact location where their data is hosted, the servers hosting the data in question can be periodically provisioned and de-provisioned to reflect the current capacity requirement. This evolving topology can be challenging for today’s technologies and it could be very difficult for management to constantly update configurations that accommodate each such change.
3. Regulatory compliance: Data integrity and security are nothing more than the ultimate responsibilities of organizations, even if it is in the hands of a service provider. System-wide educating auditors, proving that your data is safe and secure even when there is no physical control over the systems, is a challenge. They must provide them with the ultimate visibility of all activities.
Controlling access and monitoring of cloud administrators is a cutoff point to ensure sensitive data is secure. While users may want to maintain background checks on their own privileged users and may also impose significant physical monitoring, even if this is done by their cloud provider, it is a process that does not belong to them. So that would mean compromising some element of power or control. These people can have almost unlimited access to the infrastructure, something they need to maintain and verify the performance and availability of cloud resources for all customers.