The financial crisis is the touchstone of cloud computing

As a new generation of computer models, cloud computing brings us a change in strategy and process, just like the clouds in the blue sky, the changes are endless. But how can you ensure data security while using the cloud? So let's consider a few questions: where is the physical location of data storage? How is the data protected? Who can access the data? How to retrieve the data ...

Rewrite startup manual

Creating a new software company is not difficult, but on the road to success, the hardest part is being able to refactor the old rules to meet the needs of the online age. Of course, getting venture capital or angel investment funds is the first step in starting a company.

Last year, when the global financial crisis came, the US government responded more to helping the "rock-solid" institutions to restore public confidence. Now we are all aware that these so-called foundations are not as strong as we have always thought, but the result is that even when the current return on investment falls sharply, the US government demands that the public trust those institutions, then the public will inevitably be skeptical.

Of course, we haven't gone into the myriad of bank failures and financial panics that have happened so many times. Let's take a look at the relatively beneficial side of the current crisis-if it does exist-we have now been awakened by the pain, and although we have lost a lot, we have to learn from the loss and become wiser The first is to throw away the financial satisfaction we once had (financialcomplacency).

When it companies evaluate service providers to provide them with a variety of cloud services, it is important to take into account the lessons of this international financial crisis and realize that, in a sense, handing your data to the cloud is like choosing an investment tool, be sure to pay attention to their basic attributes, such as security, Availability and mobility.

Fundamentally, the same considerations for critical attributes apply to any it start-up-security must always be the most important consideration. At the same time, there are two practical factors that challenge the applicability and security of cloud services, and we are now looking at these two facts.

The first is a clear fact that cloud computing is a new computing paradigm, so many long-established policies and processes may no longer apply to traditional IT companies that do not change, or need to be modified to accommodate cloud structures.

In addition, with the advent of public clouds and other external cloud services, control is bound to be stripped away, at least partially stripped-at a time when companies are fully aware of the consequences of a lack of control and how to ensure that data security is critical.

Looking for the light in the dark

Although there is a lot of data protection issues in the cloud, this is not the only negative information. For many users using cloud services, they actually have some advantages, and they can improve the availability of data, enhance data protection and security. Therefore, depending on the service provided and the specific provider, some of these concerns can be turned into advantages.

For the concerns we have discussed, some cloud service providers have established data security measures that are fully qualified for the user's needs. For example, in network intrusion prevention, detection and access control, more mature strategy process is more powerful, monitoring mechanism is ready.

From the point of view of data availability and data protection, a cloud service provider that distributes data across multiple geographic locations may provide a range of disaster recovery steps and be able to get faster access responses (imagine that the data is geographically dispersed, User access to distributed cloud services is significantly faster than a slow network connection to the corporate headquarters. Also, don't forget that with these dispersed clouds, the cost of providing more powerful data backup capabilities is low.

Reporting and auditing control mechanisms for security and data protection are a common challenge for many companies. A cloud provider, especially if it can provide a comprehensive service level agreement (SLAS), may provide more complete data protection reports, which can ease some of the regulatory burden.

Leveraging Cloud Services

Within the company, users may have many opportunities to use cloud services. Many companies have deployed applications through SaaS providers, rather than hosting them within the company. Cloud services can also be leveraged at the middleware layer, the server layer, and the storage service layer. At the same time, cloud providers offer a full range of services at different levels of security, from services with no security protection to high security levels of data security services (such as access control and encryption) and other forms of protection.

At this point, do not think that the lack of specific protection measures of the service is of no value. The key to the problem is to understand the requirements and to keep security consistent with the specific services. A particular dataset or application may not require a complete set of security mechanisms. One of the main attractions of the cloud is that you are free to choose your service portfolio just to fit your requirements for a particular feature, and you should also know that there are many applications that do not need to be protected in the cloud.

Before considering the choice of cloud services, companies should have a clear understanding of the service layer attributes, such as data protection and data availability. Assuming that there are multiple service tiers that are tailored to the different needs of the enterprise, some of these services should be able to perform functions such as data migration. In addition to ensuring user security, performance, and so on, and determining whether the selected cloud services meet these requirements, the choices and efforts of each step of the user should conform to the requirements of the service level Agreement (SLAS).

At present, all cloud services are in rapid development, every day there will be new services available. This means that companies can have more and more choices tailored to their specific needs, ultimately achieving cost-benefit optimization results. Although the use of cloud services is only a special area of many IT services, cloud services will continue to expand as the overall IT service level increases and the company develops the cloud management philosophy.

And the most fundamental guarantee for the continuous expansion is to have a mature and service-focused data security method