Published:
July 19 2011, 04:21 AM
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2 Comment(s)
by
Tim Dunn
OK, we might not be there quite yet, but if Service Providers do their job right, the cloud will be a much safer and less risky proposition than your internal infrastructure.
Why do I say this when current, common opinion is that the cloud is pretty much the Wild West right now? Some people are going so far as to compare it to the ".Com" era, when hype far outpaced any reality in how the brave new world would look.
It's Interesting to consider that analogy though. Take a look back at the ".Com" days we were promised that we would all trade on-line and have digital identities in a virtual world (I must admit, that I was one of the people full of such predictions). Compare it to today's world of Social Networks, Smart Devices, highly mobile global users, online commerce and I'd say all we really got wrong was the time-scales (oh yes, and the economics!).
In fact, in the ".Com" era we even had some pretty impressive models for securing the new on-line world. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for example was very robust, if a little heavy weight for all scenarios. I remember being involved in a global corporate banking model called IDENTRUS, which promised to offer corporate customers the ability to transact with other corporates by leveraging the trust relationship that both organisations had with their bank. It was elegant and gave a blue print for today's federated trust models.
So back to the argument that the cloud will offer better security than your traditional on-premise infrastructure, how could that be when you have so much control over your own environment? Well firstly most current in-house, IT Infrastructures were built with one particular business model in mind. All users were within your Enterprise's control; even customers, partners and suppliers were within your own systems. Also, all your business applications were in-house, either developed by your own teams or implemented from an off-the-shelf software package.
Figure 1: Courtesy of CloudTweaks.com
Security was also generally considered with a different philosophical point of view. We had a fortress mentality that built walls to protect sensitive information. Now I concede that we have changed our thinking from "keep the wrong people out" to "let the right people in," but adapting our security infrastructure has been a slow process.
The challenge is exponentially more complex with greater data volumes, more mobile users, many more channels for access data (PCs, tablets, phones, fridges??), business applications that are consumed from the cloud and users who are out of your direct control and who need a more agile federated trust model between their security systems and yours.
My conclusion is that a service provider who can provide a "trust brokerage" service and Service Providers building state of the art security capabilities into their offerings will be a much better approach to security. Mark my words, this will come to pass, my predictions are seldom wrong*
*see paragraph 3.