Most published reports and scholarly articles talk about the increase in the use of cloud technology and how more and more organizations are adopting the Cloud for data and applications storage.
If these reports are to be believed, then the question is:
‘Why there is only less than 10% of worlds’ data currently stored in the cloud?’
A recent report by Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) suggests that even though 99% companies have adopted cloud in some way or the other, only 16% companies have shown ‘very high’ trust level in the cloud. Furthermore, the companies with a very high trust level in the cloud have shown a 9% increase in their bottom line year over year compared to companies that have a low trust level showing only 1% increase in their profitability.
Does your Organization even need a Cloud Infrastructure?
As organizations keep churning out data from various departments, applications, and processes, the storage space chews up the IT resources. Managing data and keeping it available and safe is a time and money consuming task. Storing your data and applications on a cloud is much faster and cost effective.
Ready-made cloud services help organizations quickly adopt the cloud platform and save resources while efficiently optimizing their business process. This leads to better customer experience and gives business a competitive edge.
Where is the Data Stored on Cloud actually kept?
Various models of cloud platform such as public, private and hybrid are offered by many small and large cloud providers. Some of the famous cloud providers in the market are: Google (Google Cloud), AWS (Amazon Web Services), Microsoft-Azure. These hosting companies own multiple servers located in different regions all over the world. Companies buy or lease space from these cloud providers to store their data and applications.
Yet, no one ever knows where a certain set of data is stored at a given time as each data file is broken into chunks and each chunk is separately encrypted and stored virtually at random locations. When a user gives a command to fetch data from the cloud, it matches the encryption key with the respective data file and gives the access. How is this Data kept Secure?
By keeping your data in the cloud, you are trusting someone else to store your data safely and keep it from being corrupted, wiped or stolen. Does that mean that your cloud provider is 100% responsible for the safety and security of your data?
Cloud providers keep more than one instance of your data files at different locations so that in the case of an earthquake or any other natural disaster, your data is still safe and can be retrieved.
Each data file is encrypted both during the transit from physical premise to cloud and at the time of storage on the cloud. So, even if the file is stolen, the data thief will only get a random chunk of information. Moreover, the customer can choose to keep the encryption key to itself removing the administration personnel of the cloud provider.
The threat is where people are involved. If we observe the recent famous data breach cases such as Ashley Madison or Sony Pictures Entertainment, the data was stolen internally. So, if the customer chooses to handle the encryption key on their own without cloud personnel involvement, then it makes them the ultimate custodians of their data.
Many data-intensive companies are adopting a data. ‘hybrid’ cloud approach where they get a combination of the public and private cloud. You can store your more sensitive and personal information the private cloud and the rest on public. Financial institutions, insurance companies, and healthcare industry are the most regulatory bound sectors.
With Google getting added privacy and security certifications to its cloud platform, the trust factor is expected to grow.
Capital One, one of the largest banks of the USA recently announced that it is planning to reduce its data centers footprint from 8 to 3 by 2018 by leveraging AWS cloud services. Financial institutes showing high trust in the cloud will definitely have a positive impact and will encourage people to trust the cloud.
Cloud as an IaaS and a PaaS is an inevitability in near future. With gazillions of data being generated by individual organizations’, the capacity to store and retrieve data is less and cloud is the best-fit solution to add agility to your data.
Choose a cloud specialist technology firm that can help develop a cloud strategy for your organization and walk you through the migration process while setting security and mitigating risk.