Exploits & Vulnerabilities
Expert: Cloud can help rectify past security mistakes
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Many have written about the risks and benefits that cloud computing offers when it comes to IT security and data protection.
In a recent IT Business Edge report, IT analyst Mark Vizard suggested that the cloud offers important opportunities to correct old IT security mistakes.
According to Vizard, cloud computing offers "what amounts to a fundamentally new approach to enterprise computing." With its decentralization of physical resources, outsourcing of both software and infrastructure and unprecedented scalability, the cloud may indeed represent a sea change in IT thinking.
Because of this, Vizard wrote, cloud computing can be harnessed to improve IT security in many businesses. By adopting best practices when migrating their systems to the cloud, companies can ensure the best possible security arrangement.
Harold Moss, chief technology officer for cloud security strategy at IBM, said cloud computing is fundamentally more secure than most forms of on-premise IT solutions, according to Vizard. This, Moss said, is because cloud vendors are able to invest greater resources in security for their servers than an individual company can in its own on-premise solutions.
As such, reputable cloud computing vendors often utilize the best cloud computing security tools available.
According to Moss, many on-premise IT infrastructures rely on what he calls "bolt-on" security. In these solutions, IT is designed for functionality, with security and data protection measures added after the fact.
This is exactly the type of security mistake that cloud computing can help to solve, according to Vizard. Cloud computing solutions often build security into the core of IT infrastructure by design. In so doing, cloud computing security offers protection that is superior in many ways to that afforded by traditional IT solutions.
Confidence in cloud computing security was recently expressed by U.S. federal government CIO Vivek Kundra. Kundra announced that government agencies are on track in implementing the government's "cloud first" policy, which calls for greater cloud adoption.