It is no secret that information security is considered to be one of the most vital and primary concern for anyone running a business, and this also extends to those using or planning to incorporate a cloud computing environment into their business. Information and data security is especially important for online businesses, where any breach in security might lead to the distrust of their user which, in turn, negatively affect their business. It is important for any business to be able to protect the private data of its customers in order to uphold its reputation as a trustworthy organization, and during the initial introduction of cloud computing to the general public the issue of security is among the topmost concerns raised against it.
When the cloud computing model was first introduced, there were quite a lot of skepticism against it. Many businesses distrust the premise of putting their private, confidential, and often critical data on servers that they cannot control directly. On-site data centers still triumphed over cloud computing due to this notion, but as the cloud technology grows and people get more aware of what it means to their business and to their data security, this skepticism abates little by little.
DATA SECURITY AND CLOUD COMPUTING
In order to analyze the data security offered by cloud computing environment, it is vital for us to first take a look at the vendors offering cloud services and environments themselves. It is important to remember that cloud computing vendors are incentivized to create cloud environment that is as secure as possible if they do not want to go out of business. This means that cloud computing vendors, in effect, are information security experts by themselves, and you can expect them to invest in the security improvement and maintenance of their system. This also means that you can trust them to have optimal security practices and measures in place, so there is no need for you to worry about security management of your data.
Not only that, the truth is a vast majority of security breaches does not happen due to an error on a server, but rather due to human error. This includes things like not applying security patches on time, or even having simple configuration errors that might lead to a potential vulnerability. While cloud computing does not mean that your data will be a hundred percent free of any potential vulnerability, the fact that a lot of operations on the cloud happens automatically means that the potential of security breaches happening due to human error or negligence can be minimized. This means that there will be no guesswork involved in the management of cloud computing system.
Lastly, a vast majority of cloud computing vendors and providers are touting security as one of their selling points and services, meaning that you can rest assured that your data will be handled by security experts and ran through strictly secure operations by default.