Cloud security challenges: involving technology, supervision and many other aspects

In the past few years, the rise of cloud computing has always been a hot topic in the field of science and technology. And as the global economy is in a recession, the need for cost-containment by the company is on the rise. Whether or not to outsource business processes through the cloud has become a topic of increasing concern to managers. Under such a trend, "cloud computing is gaining ground both as a real-time networking tool and as a response to the economic downturn," said a recent Strategy Analytics report. According to Accenture's forecast, in 2013, China's cloud computing market will reach 117.4 billion yuan, is in rapid expansion.

As we all know, the "cloud" literally means that the cloud is generally wide and comfortable storage space, can achieve the computing power, service and application sharing. Outsourcing for businesses means that one company can "optimize" business processes at a fraction of the cost of self-managing-if the company outsources the management of e-mail, why is the company equipped in limited offices Many buzzing e-mail servers, and equipped with a number of technical maintenance team?

According to Paul Dean, Managing Director of Accenture Greater China Information Technology Services, SMEs are the most suitable user base for cloud computing services. With this service, SMEs no longer have to pre-configure their own systems, but instead can buy off-the-shelf, mission-critical business process services from the marketplace. "In this way, companies such as purchasing, finance and CRM can be integrated into the cloud computing system rather than on the balance sheet to see how much hardware the company has purchased." This is especially true in times of economic depression.

Is outsourcing a good idea, even at lower costs? Despite cloud computing services are rapidly growing, but giants such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM know that its move is not smooth. After all, the decision to outsource a business process also requires consideration of many factors beyond technology.

First of all, cloud computing implemented by enterprises is the integration of existing systems and cross-platform applications. "Whether existing systems can work properly with cloud-based applications is a challenge," Dingbao Luo pointed out. Migrating existing systems to the cloud, the cost of migration, the implementation cycle, and the maturity of technology are issues that must be addressed. Many CIOs also worry that cloud computing, which spends a lot of time and money on deployment, is a mere flash of the night and will soon be replaced by other new technologies.

On this basis, companies must also anticipate and manage internal data processing capabilities and determine how much to invest in infrastructure. Although the "cloud" is the most efficient way to handle big data, companies can be incredibly expensive by running the business down if the full processing power is deployed in-house. In addition, maintaining a consistent system can become a challenge if companies outsource more business processes and different suppliers.

In contrast, the more critical issue is "cloud security." An IT provider might be able to provide you with a very suitable cloud application, companies and organizations can also benefit from cloud processing capabilities, but you are willing to put the most precious resources - customer data to external suppliers hands? Will the company's data be mixed with other company's data? In addition, if the IT vendor closed down, the company's data will be what kind of impact?

In other words, whether the service provider is trustworthy or not is directly related to whether the customer's confidential information will be lost or leaked. However, the information between cloud service providers and users is not symmetrical. On the one hand, it is out of their original intention to liberate and optimize their own IT resources that enterprises outsource IT computing and services to cloud service providers, so there is hardly enough of themselves Resources to insight IT service providers "cloud" details. On the other hand, IT service providers can not fully present key information in the "cloud" to users for their own trade secrets. So in many cases, cloud computing companies have to retain control of the data for security reasons.

"Moving from traditional IT to cloud computing is about entering a whole new world with a variety of data and multiple vendors, and how data is kept in the cloud naturally becomes a problem." Dingbao Luo said, "It is not only a technical issue, but also related to policy, system, supervision, trust and many other aspects." Although people are more familiar with cloud computing, but also more willing to carry out their business through cloud services, but the cloud security is still There is a lot of ambiguity. In terms of the Chinese market, although the government has invested heavily in cloud computing and policy support, no laws and regulations have yet been promulgated on cloud computing operations. For businesses, once the data is out of the question, and can not be held accountable for the ultimate responsibility, it will result in unimaginable losses.

"That is why we recommend that companies set their chief security architect in a cloud computing environment." Dingbao Luo said. The remedies for the crisis in the past are often ex post facto, and now turn to proactive management. The chief security architect should fully co-ordinate all aspects of "cloud security," not only to track the solution itself but to assess the risks in terms of trust, regulation, policies, etc. "Only then will the company not be likely in the future Before large-scale IT accident, passively take countermeasures.

(Editor: Shi Bo-peng)