A brief analysis on the security of cloud computing industry

Although the concept of cloud computing varies by company definition, its essence is to use the network to provide services or applications to enterprises and users. These applications include both software and hardware. Amazon's S3 service, for example, provides server storage services to users over the network. That is, a standard fee of 10 cents per cell and 15 cents for each storage unit. Google offers apps software applications like Microsoft Office.

But these two should be said to be the first of the cloud computing advocates and providers, without exception, this year, the network has caused the interruption of service. Let's not say what they offer, but the way the network provides services is clearly a lack of controllability (networks rely on telecommunications operators) and reliability (network outages cause service to be unavailable). And this lack of controllability and reliability will often give users, especially the large enterprise users caused incalculable losses, which is a good explanation, why the cloud computing today, its users are mostly starting to start the Web2.0 company or small and medium-sized enterprises.

Another is that the security of cloud computing is still being questioned by most enterprises and users. To this end, Gartner published a recent report called Cloud Computing Security risk Assessment, which lists the 7 major risks of cloud computing technology. Access to privileged users, accessibility, data location, data isolation, data recovery, survey support and long-term viability.

Perhaps it is due to cloud computing reliability and security of the soft rib, delaying the application and popularization of cloud computing. Of course, the slow pace at which companies turn to cloud computing is also causing concern in the industry.

In fact, the basic idea of cloud computing is simple: The service provider's data center is responsible for storing information that has been kept on the end-user's personal computer or in the enterprise's own data center, and is accessed remotely by users over the Internet. Based on the characteristics of cloud computing itself, coupled with the recent outbreak of the credit crunch and the continuing global recession, many companies have had to compress budgets, including IT budgets, to make cloud computing's advantage more pronounced: cloud computing dramatically lowers total cost of ownership (TCO) by outsourcing all its support services.

Because the cost of equipment procurement is borne by service providers, it reduces the cost of purchasing the IT equipment needed to support applications and data storage, including the costs of servers and PCs. In addition, rental, power and cooling requirements can be reduced by reducing the space footprint of the data center. There are also some stealth benefits, such as simplifying the application support environment in general and providing better scalability, allowing enterprises to determine the expansion or contraction of services according to the changing economic situation.

The risk of cloud computing

Reducing total cost of ownership is attractive to businesses, but going to the cloud means relying on third parties to provide services, and this service may now come from different regions and possibly in other countries. The risk of entrusting services to third parties may be high, and for some businesses it may be too far to go, and it is likely that the risk is greater than the business benefit.

At the same time, this type of service also means that users are highly dependent on WAN facilities, while the increase in WAN costs may reduce some of the cost savings, which may prove to be more expensive to access a centralized behemoth. Thus, while cloud computing has a compelling case for success, it is accompanied by risks that may not be reliable compared to existing standard desktop PCs or their own data center models.