Cloud Security: Perception Is Reality
Is the cloud insecure? Maybe. But that's not the first question IT should ask.
Download the entire July 26, 2010 issue of InformationWeek, distributed in an all-digital format as part of our Green Initiative
(Registration required.)
We will plant a tree
for each of the first 5,000 downloads.
"I believe if you set it up correctly, the cloud can be as secure as anything else," says the CTO of a financial services startup. "But we don't want to have to waste time communicating to potential customers that the public cloud is secure. It's a conversation you don't want to have."
As a result, this CTO's company, which had deployed its applications on top of Amazon's Web service offering, is bugging out of the public cloud and into a private co-location facility. While he believes his team can configure the Amazon service to be just as secure as the on-site option, and the cloud's low startup costs and rapid deployment benefits are attractive, he had to ask: Could the model cost us business?
No matter how many times public cloud providers assert--often correctly--that data is well-protected on their servers, they just can't shake the insecurity rap. And that means CIOs need to ask not just whether the cloud makes business sense, but whether their customers will see it that way. They may not: Security tops the list of cloud worries in every InformationWeek Analytics cloud survey we've deployed. In our 2010 Cloud GRC Survey of 518 business technology professionals, for example, respondents who use or plan to use these services are more worried about the cloud leaking information than they are about performance, maturity, vendor lock-in, provider viability, or any other concern.
That doesn't mean businesses are shunning the cloud. Of those respondents who do use or plan to use these providers, within the next two years, 20% say up to half of their IT services will come from the cloud; an additional 45% say a quarter of their IT services could be delivered that way. The benefits, such as lower deployment costs and faster time to market, are just too attractive, particularly in today's business climate of stagnant budgets and staffing uncertainty. Still, your customers have legitimate questions about running applications in the cloud, whether on infrastructure-as-a service (IaaS) or platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environments. IT must help the business be prepared with good answers to the two main questions we raise, and others specific to the product. It may make the difference between winning business and losing confidence.
First, customers will look for assurance that an application that runs on PaaS is as secure as an application that runs behind an on-premises firewall. The answer will normally be "No--unless it is." It's an irritating response, but that's because cloud security is frustrating. Here's the breakdown.
A Web application you develop and deploy in a PaaS environment is no more--and no less--secure than a Web app you develop and deploy yourself. The basic principles of secure application development don't change because of the cloud. "Cross-site scripting is still cross-site scripting. There's not much difference whether it's in-house or PaaS," says Brian Chess, chief scientist and co-founder of Fortify Software, an application security testing company. The upshot? Developers must be trained to write secure software, regardless of where that software runs. Applications must be tested regularly to ensure that the inevitable vulnerabilities are found and remediated. Building and running an application on top of Windows Azure, Google App Engine, or Engine Yard doesn't excuse an organization from following these principles.
To read the rest of the article,
Download the July 26, 2010 issue of InformationWeek
Strategy: Cloud Questions Cloud Security : When Perception Becomes Reality
Become an InformationWeek Analytics subscriber: $99 per person per month, multiseat discounts available.
Subscribe and get our full report on cloud security questions.This report includes 12 pages of action-oriented analysis. What you'll find: Deep dive on two main cloud risk categories: loss of control and difficulties ascertaining how the provider is managing its data center operations A detailed breakdown of percentage of IT services that will be delivered from the cloud
Get This And All Our Reports
About the Author
You May Also Like
2024 InformationWeek US IT Salary Report
May 29, 20242022 State of ITOps and SecOps
Jun 21, 2022