Secure the Cloud: The Future of Cloud Computing & Security

In a digitally contemporary society, there’s been extensive conversations about cloud computing and cloud storage, like Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services. Seen as practically everything in the digital world is associated with cloud one way or another — unless specifically kept in local storage for security purposes; tech geniuses continue to find new ways to organise, process and present data. In conjunction with exceptional innovation throughout the technology industry, cloud computing will play a more and more fundamental role in our lives.

On occasion we hear of unanticipated security breaches at large corporations that dominate the headlines, causing uncertainty surrounding cloud computing. This definitely becomes off-putting, not only for potential buyers but is extremely daunting for CIOs, CISOs and their colleagues. This article aims to help you form an understanding on how securing the cloud is important of your organisations security and whether the future of cloud can be a part of your brands future.

The Future of Cloud

The popularity of cloud is promising with significant growth predicted by 2020. According to Medium, Cloud will be more effective and flexible ultimately convincing ‘no cloud’ corporations to migrate. Even with private data centres, cloud technologies will alter the way infrastructure is viewed alongside application platforms and software development. The majority of organisations that will migrate to cloud will opt for a hybrid-cloud strategy, splitting their workloads over more than one public cloud.

The pace of innovation in infrastructure and services also has an influence. Primarily, enterprises don’t want to be locked in. Cloud wars will trigger cost wars. If a corporation can get significant cost reduction on infrastructure, this can mean major savings a year. This forces DevOps and IT teams to reflect on ideal techniques that operate orchestration and data mobility to their full potential. This is extremely important when it comes to testing.

That being said, the opportunity to experiment with other applications on different platforms in a prompt, simple and cost-efficient manner results in organisations with a personalised, multi-cloud strategy that improves performance in ways once unimaginable before the cloud upsurge. Those who are using the cloud see the struggle that comes alongside managing it, so companies will begin opting for a managed solution.

50% of IT professionals believe artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning will play a major role in cloud computing adoption, increasing to 67% by 2020.

As innovative technology solutions are continuously being developed using artificial intelligence and machine learning, cloud computing will grow significantly. The remarkable capacity of information produced will require storage space. Furthermore, cloud computing will make AI, machine learning and data analysis more accessible, due to hardware found in offices (e.g. smartphones and laptops) lacking the computing power to run these applications effectively.

The Future of Cloud Security

In reference to securing the cloud, there are several meanings; securing the ideal cloud for your company, ensuring you migrate to the right cloud with innovative support. Securing your brands future and protecting your brand, ensuring it’s safe, secure and risk free.

Essentially, if you're considering purchasing one of Amazon's, or Microsoft's cloud-based services, you're buying into world-class abilities at keeping data secure. Security can therefore be perceived as convincing motivation to migrate to cloud-based systems rather than a reason to ignore them.

The challenges exist not in the security of cloud itself but in the policies and technologies for security and control for the technology. Most enterprises are accustomed with cloud or at least the notion of cloud, misconceptions and misunderstandings about what technology can offer still remain unclear. Uncertainty about the advantages of cloud computing is compounded by numerous genuine and imaginary concerns about the security and control implications of different cloud models.

Gartner states through 2020, public infrastructure as a service (IaaS) workloads will suffer at least 60% fewer security incidents than those in traditional data centres.

The position of security at major cloud providers is generally better than most enterprise data centres and using security as primary avoidance to the adoption of public cloud services should no longer be considered. However, it is not that simple moving on-premises workloads to cloud. Security groups should look towards forcing programmatic infrastructure of public cloud IaaS. Applying automation to the process further eliminating any potential for human error – commonly liable for successful security attacks.

By 2018, 60% of enterprises that implement appropriate cloud visibility and control tools will experience one-third fewer security failures.

Assigning workloads to cloud does not require a security trade-off. IaaS cloud providers offer features to guarantee users have access only to the data need, and can also track all the details of who accesses this data, when accessed it, where and so forth.

Enterprise security should instruct and educate their teams about the control features offered by cloud providers. The naïve impression that cloud providers are solely responsible for their customer’s security indicates that enterprises are ineffectively failing to address how employees are using external applications, by leaving those in charge to regulate huge amounts of often-inappropriate documents shared with other parties and occasionally the entire net. Very few security incidents that have affected organisations using cloud have been on the part of the provider. As a matter of fact, Gartner predicts by 2020, 95% of cloud security failures will take place on behalf of the customer.

Ultimately, it is the duty of the organisation to apply control over cloud. The regulatory-compliant procedure of public clouds requires that enterprises implement clear guidelines on cloud usage responsibility and cloud risk acceptance processes. Those who don’t implement a tactical approach to the use of cloud computing could eventually discover they have put themselves in an unsecure position.

Due to constant the increase in security requirements, physical access to data centres will also be strictly limited. For entry into the secure premises you will not only need be in possession of an electronic key, but also undergo a potential procedure for biometric scanning.

The future of cloud computing and security is extremely promising with a huge opportunity for technological breakthrough for the companies already using this technology today. The next few years will show the impact cloud will have the world than one has ever been able to imagine. It is compulsory for CEO’s to be aware of the latest innovations in the world of cloud technologies in order to remain competitive. Soon enough, cloud technologies will support working faster and more effectively than it is today.