Is Security an Afterthought for your Cloud?

Trust but test.

It is no news that if you deploy your IT applications on cloud and you have a security breach then the ramifications are profound. So what do you do? Not taking the cloud route would mean closing your eyes to a bundle of opportunities and possibilities that such technologies can offer for you.

Although there are definitely business benefits to cloud computing, there are also many potential risks, because cloud computing combines new technology with service providers who are also only beginning to move up the learning curve. Security, reliability and manageability continue to be the major challenges facing enterprises considering the cloud route

On the other hand, Gartner surveys show that enterprises have already begun to take advantage of private cloud-computing services and external software as a service, and are evaluating the broader use of public cloud-computing services.

For most organizations today security seems like an afterthought when ideally security needs to be addressed from the start as enterprises begin to make business use of public and private cloud computing.

It is a given that to reap the benefits of the cloud organizations will have to let go. And for this to happen there needs to be a trust between the organization and the service provider. This is easier said than done because the issue is not just about security; it is also about compliance and legal. While organizations considering the cloud will end up using a mix of traditional IT and cloud-computing services, most industry pundits do not advice to just let go, but a policy of ‘trust but test’ is advocated.