Welcome to the future. Let’s stop to think about all of the technological advances that have made our personal and professional lives easier. Prior to smartphones, the internet, and cloud computing, things moved a bit more slowly. And while some people miss the slower moving days of the past, most will admit that they wouldn’t want to live without high speed internet, email, text messaging and so on and so forth. We truly do live in the future. It’s amazing when you stop to think about it. But with every great leap forward and every new technological advancement, there will inevitably be new ways for people to take advantage of unsuspecting people and organizations. Yes, the dreaded data breach.
It seems like every few days we learn of yet another massive data breach. Companies like MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, and most recently, Yahoo have all experienced massive cases of data theft. This is what consumers have to live with when we store so much of our personal information in the cloud. Eventually most of us will be the victim of a cyber attack.
For some folks, it’s not that big of a deal. Change a password, update some security settings, and boom, all done. Many are not so lucky, though. With major financial information being stolen and used – resolving the situation is much more time consuming and difficult. And if it’s a breach that originated from your organization then get ready to spend months trying to rectify the issue and regain the trust of your clients. Gigantic organizations like Yahoo have the resources and PR departments to overcome these unfortunate situations, but many companies aren’t in a position to spend millions resolving these issues.
When it comes to cybersecurity, the best defense is a good offense.
Your organization needs to be proactive in ensuring the security of its valuable data. If you don’t have the resources to do this in house, many choose to store data in large, public clouds run by large companies like Microsoft and Amazon. But is that the right choice?
Cloud computing truly is one of the great technological advancements that have made everyday life much easier. Being able to start a project on one device and move to another and pick up where you left off is something that wasn’t so simple just a few years ago. The ability to access your data remotely speeds up many organizational processes. And for the most part, it’s a pretty safe place to store sensitive information. Until it isn’t.
Over the past couple of years, more and more CIO’s and CTO’s are moving their data to private clouds, providing their organizations with several benefits. First of all, a private cloud means increased security. Because private clouds are dedicated to a single organization, your organizations data isn’t going to be compromised just because another company on the same network was attacked. Another benefit to going private is compliance. Sarbanes Oxley, HIPAA, and PCI compliance cannot be delivered through a public cloud, but since a private cloud is dedicated to a single client, these compliances are much easier to achieve.
You’ll also gain more control of where your data is stored. With a public cloud, you usually never know where that data is stored. This gives you less control over the environment in which is resides. This can create a lot of problems.
Ultimately, everything comes down to cost. Private clouds are usually less expensive in the first place. After you take into consideration the additional security, even if your organization spends a little more up front, it’s going to save you the time and money that a potential data breach will cost when your data is compromised in the public cloud.
So, the choice is yours: do you continue to take the risk of public cloud computing, or is it time to start looking into securing your data?
