What you need to know about security in the cloud

Introduction

Cloud services have many benefits like scalable workloads, cost-effectiveness, collaboration efficiency, convenience, access to automatic updates and others. However, since the cloud's very nature is of a collective resource, identity management, confidentiality and access control are of particular concern. All of these three factors point in a single major direction – Cloud Security.

Two concepts are of clear importance when we talk about Cloud Security: The first is the Security of a Cloud and the second is Security in A Cloud. Both of these are mutually exclusive concepts and should not be confused with each other. Whenever one wants to opt for a cloud service, he or she should check on both these aspects to make sure that they are opting for a cloud or a cloud service which has all its corners covered.

Security in The Cloud

According to Tech Target, cloud computing security is a set of control-based technologies and policies designed to adhere to regulatory compliance rules and protect information, data applications and infrastructure associated with cloud computing use. This essentially comprises of Security in The Cloud which is protected by multiple layers of restrictions in the form of Cloud Application Security Brokers, Web Application Firewall, policy management, directory services, multi-factor authentication, encryption, etc. While cloud service providers will look into the safety of how and where your data is stored and who has access to that data, there also several third party auditors. They attest that your CSP’s internal process exists and that they are effective in handling the safety of their facility where your data has been stored.

Thus, while you check how secure your cloud is with its internal best practices, it is also important to go for a CSP that has certain certifications and compliances in place like PCI DSS, HIPAA, Gov. Cloud, geo-privacy and others. The documentations you should look for also depend on what kind of business or company you are. For example, The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is an information security standard for organizations that accept, process, store or transmit credit card information. If your clouds have been certified with PCI DSS, it means that all your important card numbers are completely safe with them. Similarly, there are certifications that are concept neutral and overall define the operational capabilities of your cloud. The CMMI Level 3 certificate proves that the CSP has detailed process that guides the product lifecycle from its conception throughout to its delivery and maintenance.

Security of A Cloud

Coming to Security of a Cloud that forms a crucial part of the data security story. It means that data must maintain its integrity under attack. There will always be a time when your data in cloud come in evil hands. The possibility of this is higher in traditional IT systems since not all companies that use IT can follow super-standard security rules having layers over layers of security funds in place.

Now in a cloud paradigm, recovery of your data is as important as its safe storage. Effective cloud disaster recovery provides continuity for services and the ability to fail over to a second site if there is a hardware or software failure of IT systems. In such cases, Service Levels Agreements are of utmost importance since they help in holding the CSP responsible for any data outage or if data cannot be recovered during a disaster. Here, compliances in the form of uptime guarantee, recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives can form a cloud SLA. These too should be kept in mind while deploying your IT infrastructure on cloud.

Conclusion

These are some parameters of judging a cloud’s security capability. Cloud companies like AWS, Azure, ESDS and others have a plethora of certifications that establish their stronghold in its cloud service and security. Checking the various use cases and case studies of companies where it has dealt with challenging security concerns helps in arriving at a decision on selecting a cloud with best in-class security features.

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Data Center of the Future

Introduction

We have great dependency on the internet to run businesses and without it probably a portion of the business won’t be responsive to the current needs. We are still not aware about how our life revolves around data centers and how important they are to store and distribute data. Services like transport, internet, telecommunication, entertainment, hospitals and banks are among areas which are integrated and controlled by data centers. A huge amount of data is stored in these centers which are responsible for securing the data of billions of humans. Not just data centers, but data center services have also changed drastically since the last decade. Big data and cloud storage has modified the existing data centers. Data center services include the components which are important for smooth operation of management and distribution of data in an enterprise. These services include data center processes, hardware, software and dedicated personal. There are many changes which can be made in how a data center should work in future and cater to the needs of an organization.

Let’s have a look at some of the key trends which can change the existing data centers as we know it:

1. Software Defined Networking (SDN)

Software-defined networking is rapidly becoming a key component in data centers for automation. Software-defined networking provides efficient ways to manage virtualization saves cost and offers speedy service delivery. It gives data center managers the control to manage each and every aspect of a data center which results in higher agility to manage and upgrade their hardware. Modern data centers have become too complex to be managed by assigned personnel and thus, it is important to use an automation tool. It helps enterprises to enhance their security by minimizing vulnerabilities caused by humans.

2. Eco-friendly

Building green data centers is currently a trend which aims for an eco-friendly environment which shapes the future of data centers. According to studies, half of the energy is used to run the infrastructure, like power, cooling and UPS. The remaining half of the energy is used to process the data. Data centers have started to work towards low energy consumption by reducing energy footprint. Newer cooling techniques, better efficiency and upgraded power usage effectiveness (PUE) means that there are fewer carbon emissions which minimizes the damage to the environment. A new term that is emerging is Water Usage Efficiency (WUE) which focuses on water to cool the entire data center. Some other latest technologies in the market are economizers and evaporative cooling which uses outdoor air.

3. Edge Computing

Edge computing analyzes the data where it is created instead of sending it across data centers which consumes time which delays the decision-making process. Edge computing is a network of micro data centers which process and store data locally and later send all the data to big data centers or on cloud. This lets you organize and analyze data in real-time closer to the edge of the network which is a need for many industries like healthcare, finance and telecommunication.

4. Needs of users

Data centers host several businesses on their IT infrastructure and cater to their many needs. To handle high traffic and decrease network outages, they are now evolving hyper scaling to help businesses from bandwidth crunches and allow customers for a smoother customer experience. Data center managers should address the customer’s needs and build a data center to map their requirements and offer compute and storage resources accordingly.

Conclusion

There is a constant flux in technologies because of growing needs in multiple areas which are continuously evolving to achieve much smoother business. The world adapts quickly to those technologies which impacts people’s lives the second they make use of it.

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The ultimate banking and financial sector with cloud computing machine!

Banking and financial sector basically operate over the vast IT infrastructures that deal with Big amount of data on a day-to-day basis. Banking organizations and the financial sector as a whole has been relatively slow in adopting the cloud. Their strategy has been to wait and watch on how the cloud performs both from a security as well as robustness of infrastructure point of view.

How cloud computing will help financial sector to improve performance:

Cost Saving –

With cloud computing banks will not have to invest in hardware, software, dedicated servers and manpower to monitor the same. Also the unique nature of cloud computing allows financial institutions to pick and choose the services required and pay for whatever they have consumed.

Great scalability and flexibility –

The cloud gives bank ability to respond quickly on customers’ demands, which gives a competitive edge. They can scale up and scale down technology according to need. Improves efficiency – Due to standardization in the cloud, it is easy to integrate new technology and applications. This brings clients close to their clients, i.e. transaction banking eases payment between buyers and sellers.

Agility –

Cloud is available on demand so less infrastructure investment is required. Also financial institutions experiences shorter development cycle for products which leads to faster and more efficient response to the need of a customer.

Managed backup –

Cloud can manage banks critical data, to ensure in the event of disaster a bank can bounce back rapidly and easily.

Cloud options used by financial sector:

Card and mobile payment processing –

Card and mobile payment processor are now operating on the cloud. The processors on cloud provides financial institutes and banking sector specialized expertise needed in card processing. They also provide fraud detection, security and up time delivery.

Core banking –

Now a day’s cloud service providers understand the financial service space and provide turnkey banking space that gives online banking, electronic bill paying.

Human resource and talent management –

Financial service companies are considering cloud based HR services that coffers HR software like payroll, benefits, talent management. This has resulted into better recruitment for companies.

Infrastructure as a service –

To avoid costly hardware and software upgrade banks are moving their application development and testing to cloud providers.

Below are some predictions related on financial sectors with cloud computing:

• 69% of customers already use the internet to buy financial products online.
• 50% of world’s bank will disappear through cracks opened by digital disruption of the industry.
• Mobile banking usage will exceed 1.75 billion by 2019 representing 32% of the global population.

Future of financial industry with Cloud technology:

In future, Cloud technologies along with analytics, mobile technologies and big data will allow banks to unlock value from existing data. This will lead to address risk management and drive customer engagement. By standard development processes, scalability and collaboration provided by the cloud, the banks will be able to create new and innovative product and service offerings for their customers.

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