From the past few years, cloud computing is changing from middleware systems to that of grid computing and cluster computing systems. Cloud is everywhere and so it is penetrating into our live more and more.
One of the biggest concerns today is our data security. Cloud computing timeline shows us how this upcoming is taking over the traditional business and IT infrastructure. It should be kept in mind how enterprise demands are changing cloud computing environment and due to this, they are wondering whether to risk migrating their application and data on the cloud.
With the introduction of fog computing, the viewpoint of cloud computing is completely changed. Integrating fog computing and using smart systems has contributed much to the security but now also one of the major concern is IT security and privacy of data.
Earlier when IT security become a concern for companies, firewall technology become most popular, but today, when we talk about Infrastructure as a service, software as a service and platform as s service, firewall alone cannot solve the problem of data security.
It must be very clear that traditional systems consisting of switches, hubs, routers, firewalls and servers running on dedicated hardware were completely different from today’s cloud computing technology and traditional systems are completely outdated.
How Traditional Systems and IT Infrastructure Secured?
Let us take an example of a medium-sized company having 100 employees and is using traditional systems for deploying their services and applications. The traditional IT infrastructure can be secured by using any of the followings:
- Authentication and authorization
- Physical means
- Firewalls
- Security patch management
- Checking vulnerability of systems
- Network separation
- Regular checking of system security
- Encryption of data to increase security
- Adding intrusion detection systems
- Monitoring of unauthorized access
To bring out the high level of IT-level security, we can also apply some robust security policies and also include some industry best practices and leading edge security tools. Security can also be increased by using traditional tools and making the environment more secure. But for this, much money and efforts are needed.
How is Cloud Data and Environment Secured?
When it comes to IT policies and cloud computing security, same standards are followed even today and best practices can be applied to secure the cloud. Using this 7 steps model of cloud migration, migrating to the cloud has become easy and cloud brokers will help you to migrate to the cloud environment without facing any problem.
When you think of cloud computing and distributed computing as an evolution of the traditional IT infrastructure and virtualization of components that are running on dedicated servers, the security measures are changes for sure.
But some of the things still remain the same including cloud computing security policies and measures. You must have heard many times that the security of websites are compromised and are hacked using DDOS attacks or using vulnerabilities in the system. The question here arises is how you will be securing your virtualized servers and make them secure for storing your confidential data.
On one side, we are getting high computation power and on other, the systems are always vulnerable to attacks. Data-intensive computing is most common these days where data is processed and computed on the cloud.
The question here arises is why some of the companies are migrating to cloud while some are not. What cloud migration strategy they are following and how migrating to the cloud is helpful in scaling the overall profit of their business. Is cloud computing secure?
According to a survey, 58 % business which migrates to the cloud environment is satisfied with the services whereas others are not. Is cloud computing secure for all of them that shifted to the cloud?
Even though there are many risks and challenges to the cloud, companies are shifted as it is more scalable and cheap than traditional IT infrastructure.
Is Cloud Computing Secure?
The security of cloud computing totally depends on the security measures you are taking and which type of business you have. Simply using firewalls and network protocols is not enough. You need specialists, developers, testers and even auditors to make the cloud more secure.
Data centers need to be protected and there should be authentication of the user and only the authorized person should have authority to access the confidential data. The integrity of data is must and the whole system must be highly protected. Security of data is the most crucial problem of today’s virtual world.
Cloud technology is real and you can touch it. It will be always secure than that of traditional systems and there are just misconceptions that cloud is less secure. It is fast, reliable and can be accessed from any geographical location. Above all that, the best thing is it is based on a pay per use model.
The conclusion of the question is cloud computing really secure is that it totally depends on the standards, protocols and security measures any organization is taken to make their data secure.