Cloud security remains a barrier to mainstream adoption of both public and private clouds. But best practices are emerging that make CIOs more comfortable launching new cloud projects — and 2011 should be a banner year.
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As Gartner sees it, the cloud represents a new opportunity to shape the relationship between those who use IT services and those who sell them. Gartner predicts worldwide cloud-services revenue — including public and private services — will reach $148.8 billion in 2014. What’s more, the firm predicts all Global 2000 companies will use public cloud services by 2016.
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In the meantime, those best practices for protecting data in the cloud continue to be carved. So what is the current state of cloud security? What are major corporations and IT-services firms doing to protect data in the cloud? NewsFactor went on a mission to find out. Read on to discover what security leaders are saying about the topic.
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Begin With Security in Mind
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First, security has to be part of the process from the start — in deciding which workloads belong in the cloud, in assessing provider capabilities, and in negotiating contractual service-level agreements. You can’t ‘bolt on’ a security solution after the fact, said Lynda Stadtmueller, a program manager at Frost Sullivan. There shouldn’t be a trade-off between protecting sensitive data and the low cost of a cloud environment. Moving to the cloud should always provide at least equal, if not superior, security and resilience as the private data center.
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As Stadtmueller sees it, the beautiful thing about the cloud is that it’s not an all or nothing model. Its low barrier to entry means you can cherry pick one or two apps — often the next app, rather than a legacy app — for cloud deployment without disrupting the rest of your data-center infrastructure. What’s more,…