10 Reasons on Why Cloud Computing Makes Your Employees Efficient

Migrating to the cloud is a huge decision and therefore you need to weigh several pros and cons of before making any sort of changes in your infrastructure and the way of working. The ultimate goal of doing any new change in an organization is increasing ROI (Return On Investment); which also directly proportional to increasing the effectiveness and productivity of the employees. 

As per the surveys were done in the last decade, the organizations have voted in the favor of adopting cloud computing and said that they are benefited from this change. Employee productivity has increased in multiple ways like reducing downtime, increasing communication efficiency and collaboration.

Here are 10 reasons on why cloud computing makes your employees efficient –

· Reduction in Downtime

Seeing a downtime is a nightmare for the organizations and everyone wants an efficient service so that they hardly ever see this nightmare. Cloud service providers dedicate a special team to look after the smooth running of services for their clients. The technical support team ensures that the issues are responded at a faster rate. These steps help in reduction of the downtime and hence contributes in increasing employee productivity.

· Optimum Usage of In-House Resources

To enhance the efficiency of the company for an increased time, the cloud computing team makes sure that the team doesn’t get stressed due to the day-to-day tasks. Instead, the service provider sees to it that the team focuses on the new strategies and customer-specific problems. So, the organization utilizes the IT resources more efficiently and divides the tasks according to the team’s expertise.

· Enhancement in the Collaboration

The most known benefit of cloud computing is the ease of access. Employees are having the ease of accessibility by which they can fetch whatever they want from the cloud at anytime and anywhere. The feature of reaching out to the colleagues in real-time irrespective of location and time has given employees a liberty of work. Due to an increase in effective collaboration, companies have reported that productivity is increased by 400%! So, that is quite a big number!

· Adaption with the Market

The clients after shifting to the cloud, get the ability to use the latest tools and features. The feature of scalability, especially the vertical auto-scaling feature caused a big revolution in the cloud industry. This rise in flexibility gives organizations the power to serve to the heavy load requirements of clients on demand. Having the right and time-saving tools can make the employees more productive. 

· Integration with Current Systems

Generally, the major amount of cloud computing platforms easily integrates into different software applications. This seamless integration offers various benefits to the employees like switching between the tools instead of the manual passing of the information. Automatic switching between the tools consumes less time and is very likely to be error-free.

· Disaster Recovery and Prevention

There are situations where some sort of disaster can occur and wreak havoc on your organization. It may be due to online threats, malware or, ransomware attacks. The disaster recovery services provided by the cloud service providers can help you in dealing with such crisis situations. Due to virtualization, it is now possible to have multiple clones of your data easily available at the data centers.

· Increase in the use of own devices

Any internet-connected device has the potential to turn into a work machine depending on the load that device can take and the functions which need to be operated. Employees can now become more responsive on-the-go and hence this increases the productivity.

· Increased Competitiveness

After the research, many business owners say that they have gained a competitive position in the business race. Implementing cloud computing made them unable to capitalize the opportunities rapidly than other competitors. The technology gives organizations the power of speed and agility. Due to this power, the SMBs can easily come in the competition with bigger companies.

· Security Services Virtualized Too

With an increasing number of security breaches, ransomware attacks, and online frauds, there is even more necessity of a top-notch security service. Such attacks restrict the employees from getting access to data files, and the downtime can affect the productivity. Reputed cloud service providers have specialized security services which can prevent such threats, and even if they happen, they can make you recover quickly. Thus, this security-as-a-service also increases the productivity of your organization.

· Efficient Handling of Huge Chunks of Data

Due to cloud computing, handling the enormously increasing data is getting very smooth. Employees can sort, analyze, structure, design, and organize big data in a matter of minutes. Moreover, the data, statistics, and analytics can be easily shared and accessed across the organization, or even several branches of the organization swiftly in real-time. This makes decision-making super easy due to reducing the errors and repetitive efforts on the same tasks which lead to wastage of time.

All in all, cloud computing provides lots of ways which helps in increasing the productivity and efficiency of your organization and obviously in turn, of the employees.

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Debunking the Top 4 Myths about Public Cloud Security

Lots of businesses are moving towards cloud but still, they are pretty confused on which cloud to choose. Where most of the small and medium-sized businesses prefer public clouds but, they still have a fear in mind about the privacy, security, and costs as it is a public cloud. A lot of confusion still lingers around about the data security when people choose cloud computing. Public clouds are the recommended solutions to the businesses for cutting down the IT costs and improve the scalability and flexibility. 

Security and control are two different and this difference is seen between the data security of cloud computing and data center. A company gets several benefits from cloud computing. Due to the public cloud, the companies can have quick provisioning, deployment, and IT resource scaling at much lower costs. A user can enter new markets easily and lessen the development time and wastage.

Actually, a public cloud can serve similar or better purposes than that of the traditional platforms like on premise. Even though there are several benefits, some myths still exist. We are here to debunk some of the myths about the public cloud so that the enterprises won’t get confused.

So, here are the top four myths about the security of the public cloud:

•        You can’t control your data location/residency

•        Customers on the same server are a threat to each other

•        There is a lack of inherent transparency in the public cloud

•        CSP (Cloud Service Provider) is only responsible for the security

You can’t control your data location/residency

Data residency/location is one of the prime concerns and therefore several countries have various laws which consider exporting of personal data in other countries as a criminal offense. Data residency is more of a concern when handling the personality identification data like financial information of any kind or health-related private information. In these cases, the cloud service provider should choose the locations from which it runs its data centers. The resellers that need to provide cloud services to their customers shall at least choose the service providers that can handle the location wise needs. So, it clarifies that this issue is not a matter to stress on. You can choose a quality cloud-service provider that can provide data residency as per your choice with accountability of data.

Customers on the same server are a threat to each other

This one is a constant myth about the multi-tenant cloud infrastructure that it is more vulnerable to attacks than that of the traditional IT infrastructure. Basically, in a public cloud, the tenants share all kinds of resources like storage, compute, and network. The sharing of all these physical resources arises the security concerns in the minds of the cloud tenants. They think that they are more vulnerable to attacks by the tenants of the same cloud. But, in actuality, it is very difficult for any tenant to attack the other tenant in the in the public cloud environment. The layer of hypervisor is primarily responsible for the separation between every tenant. If you don’t know then understand that hypervisors are very secure and therefore they are critical to attack. In addition, there are some cloud providers which provides more options to diminish the multi-tenancy risks at a greater extent. If you want to subscribe to a cloud service provider and get their offerings, then you should fully understand your requirements.

There is a lack of inherent transparency in the public cloud

Lack of transparency is liked by no one in any business as customers seek transparency everywhere. If there is visibility in any business, then it gets easier for the customers to trust you. Mistrust is the main reason that consumers back out from the cloud services because to build trust you should provide transparency and security. We can evaluate the cloud service provider by checking whether it has certain security compliances certifications or not. Further, you can validate if the service provider abides by the Could Trust Protocol or not. Through this protocol, the customers get the right information and it mentions that the data on the cloud is as it is and as per the rules mentioned. This protocol helps the customers by seeing the original information.

The companies can make correct choices about the data and processes. Which kind of data should go on which cloud and how to sustain the risk management decisions regarding the cloud services are the points which the company can work on confidently. Therefore, the visibility improves and the transparency gets affordable. Even though not every cloud provider will emphasize this and spend bucks over the maintaining 100% transparency, so every user can’t strictly demand this feature. Though, there will always be some kind of transparency maintained.

CSP (Cloud Service Provider) is only responsible for the security

Public cloud has an upper hand because the organizations can afford the resources like compute, space, RAM and several other features. Everyone can’t afford a personal server and hence the public cloud comes to the rescue.

The point is very easy, you don’t have to create everything from scratch as someone has already built it for you. It is not necessary for you to buy an individual server, or build a data center for that matter; unless that’s the only thing you have planned for your IT infrastructure.

No matter what, it is still your data and applications and therefore, you are responsible for it. It is your duty to select a perfect cloud vendor that caters your needs and seriously takes care of the security, disaster prevention, and post-disaster recovery. You should not just take a casual or mild approach while choosing the service provider and then the package which the provider offers. Things won’t work like that. Even if the vendor knows how to take care of the security part, you should also be knowledgeable enough to understand the risks, and make decisions.

Conclusion

Anyhow, the fact is that the public cloud provides more security than a conventional data center. Nowadays, cloud service providers are providing various levels of security by having some great tools and scanners. All of this is because the increasing number of threats and therefore growing cyber threats have forced them to become more attentive for preventing the attacks.

Importance of SOC (Security Operations Center) for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

With an increasing number of threats in the world, small and mid-sized businesses are facing numerous issues. They are keen to find security services which fit their budgets and yet provide proper security services. An important problem that SMBs (small and mid-sized businesses) face is lack of personnel to build and function their own SOC (Security Operation Center). Due to this, the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) process is out of reach. Eventually, many such organizations are turning towards the way of outsourcing SOC as a Service which can suit their organization's needs and improve the security posture. Several small to mid-sized companies face the "trio of the cyber security troubles" as follows:

· Recent ransomware like Petya and WannaCry caught the world in their evil grip but in a more modern way. 

· With the increasing number of cyber threats, there is an increase in the security expertise scarcity creating over 3.5 million cyber security openings by 2021.

· As per the Verizon’s DBIR report, hackers are targeting on small and mid-sized businesses and creating a havoc in them as they lack proper SOC (Security Operations Center) services.

As a consequence, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are finding ways on how they can deal with so many upcoming challenges. Therefore, they are going to the reputed security service providers who can implement SOC as a Service. Although, this is a right decision, yet exploring and choosing the correct SOC service provider is not that easy. If your vendor lacks proper and mandatory amenities for the effective SOC with a plain focus on managed detection, then this can turn to a bigger loophole in your security posture.

If you too are stuck on how to choose a smart security provider, then you can follow the below checklist. It guides you to search for a comprehensive SOC service. The checklist includes:

Complexity level

A recent Gartner study identified that MDR (managed detection and response) is a fast-growing market. The detection is obviously used to recognize the threats, but the SOC should also provide prevention and IR (incident response) in case of a disaster. 

A comprehensive security package like decisive and effective IR, protection from DDoS attack, ransomware, data breach, and disaster recovery is all you need when you consider a SOC. If the vendor doesn't provide 24/7 SOC and IR services, then it should not be termed as SOC. 

Real-Time Threat Analysis

Monitoring the threats in real-time with the use of detection services and forensics is a crucial task for SOC. It should be for all the security incidents on the basis of 24/7. The scanty staff in the security team can't handle the noisy and complex SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) tools. They can't strain out the false alarms and hence the performance level doesn't stay up to the mark for vital security matters.

You have to make sure that the SOC provider has the abilities of smart detection of the threats round the clock so that you can sleep peacefully.

Armed Threat Hunting

With the burgeoning techniques of hacking and hackers getting smart, it is very tedious to detect every single type of attack. Staying armed means, the network has to stay prepared in advance and search for the threats proactively. This would result in auto-adjustment of the network as per the latest cyber-attacks which could be just a few hours ago. This is a huge responsibility of the security specialists. It calls for learning the different and unique requirements of the client's network and hunt down the threats which can still pass on through the detection process. For this method to work, we need relevant and efficient threat-intelligent sources, machine learning techniques, and choosing everything which can help in one or the other way to find valid security incidents impacting the consumers.

Compliance Control

Compliances are a vital factor while implementing the SOC. Every SOC should compulsorily have some compliances like PCI DSS, HITECH, HIPAA, GLBA, FFIEC, and some other standards that high-quality industries must bind to. The compliance organizations must provide templates for recommended security checks and vulnerability assessments and see whether the businesses are abiding by the given regulatory measures.

Not just hackers can cost you big bucks, but not having required compliances can lead you to pay penalties as well! You must make sure that all these things are handled by your SOC service provider.

Strategic Advising

After monitoring the network and hunting for the upcoming threats, the security engineers will get an in-depth understanding of your company's network. This knowledge of network topology, places of the vital assets will help them to protect those with a proper defense strategy. You should demand this from the outsourced SOC provider as this contributes to designing and improving the security posture.

Instead of having a just scalable cloud-based technology, an outlined IR (Incident Response) process and a team of well-trained security specialists shall persuade the clients to get insights into their organization's security posture. Further, this helps in improving and running the business processes more effectively.

Defined Pricing

Pricing is the issue which everyone faces. Make sure that your prices don't fluctuate every single time because this would deteriorate the trust of your consumers. The SOC service provider should make fixed pricing plans. The rates shall vary on the number of sensors and users instead of log data's volume and servers monitored. Such predictable and defined pricing models are essential for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). These organizations struggle with the fluctuating costs and can't afford highly expensive managed services. Therefore, the SOC providers should not have unpredictable costs.

To summarize

All these factors are important to consider while choosing the SOC provider. This checklist will guide you to know which things you should not compromise when you want to outsource the SOC provider. You can further read why SOC is important here.