Leveraging cyber security & its types

LEVERAGING CLOUD SECURITY

Cloud computing is the highly venerated and worshipped nouveau God. In a constantly evolving cyberspace, cloud computing has become indispensable to many businesses. Cloud computing has been known to

• accelerate business growth
• ease the launch of new products,
• speed up time to market, and
• expand to new markets.

Leveraging the cloud has multiple benefits for businesses. We have listed the top 5 benefits to consider.

1. Scalability

   – Cloud services are highly scalable, the resources can be increased or decreased as the situation demands. Cloud allows accommodating for more user traffic during the peak season and less traffic during the off-season. The costs of the company may vary according to internet traffic. This helps reduce costs as organizations don’t have to pay for and maintain resources that aren’t needed all the time. With on-premise technology, the only option is to upgrade existing hardware or purchase a more powerful server.

1. Better Security

   – In contrast to the earlier stages of cloud adoption, when companies were plagued with fear and apprehension about adopting rather new technology, it has been proven today that more than half the companies leveraging cloud experience better security. Cloud service providers have the resources to protect the infrastructure and data in ways that most small and midsized businesses cannot.

1. Increased Efficiency in Collaboration

   – Collaboration in the cloud, the ability to traverse electronically across geographical parameters, time zones, or even organizational borders is becoming a critical foundation for business success. With teams being able to work remotely through cloud computing solutions, they are endowed with the ability to perform work operations consistently. Cloud services allow for real-time collaboration between employees to achieve maximum efficiency for the organization. This also benefits the clients for their projects are delivered on time due to the augmented ease of communication even over their own devices.

1. Improved Employee Productivity

   – Studies have reported that businesses that switched to cloud experienced cost savings, increased employee productivity, and improved security as a result of using a cloud approach. Cloud technology helps increase productivity because employees can take their work with them and work when they feel most productive or creative following the BYOD program. Most cloud applications have integrations available that allow automating routine tasks, thereby channeling all focus to the core competency.

1. Accelerating business growth

   – Agility and flexibility of the cloud are the main motivators for companies to take the leap. It offers the ability for rapid provisioning of computing resources and scaling those resources to align with changing business needs. The agile design of the cloud also allows companies to implement new technologies and products quicker and with greater ease. Businesses can test ideas in the marketplace, gather feedback, and analyze big data in real-time. This rapidity enables companies to streamline their efforts to meet consumer demands, thereby accelerating growth.

1. Higher Employee Satisfaction

   – The reality is that when given the opportunity, most working professionals prefer working from home or remote, rather than working on-site. Remote workers were observed to have better work-life balance, focus, and less stress and were happier overall. Companies that give workers more flexibility are more likely to retain them in the long-run. Additionally, the myth that remote workers work less has been consistently disproved by several studies undertaken in the USA where the culture of working from home is rather prevalent. As businesses recognize the benefits of adopting more flexible work policies, cloud computing will continue to play a central role in assisting employees in staying connected and productive from anywhere.

TYPES OF CLOUD SERVICES

The path to more flexible networks and a more flexible workplace is known to end at cloud services. The term cloud computing or services is rather elusive and vague; it is an umbrella term consisting of different types. Businesses must be able to precisely ascertain what their needs are, so that, they can make an informed decision.

• Private Cloud-

  As the name suggests, a private cloud consists of computing resources used solely by one company or organization. A private cloud may be operated from the on-site data center of an entity or may be managed by an external service provider. Like public clouds, private clouds are planned, configured, and managed as per the unique business needs of the client. Private clouds can provide greater security protection than a public cloud environment as a single-tenant system ensures that the company does not need to share resources with others, allowing access and security control more stringent. It should also be remembered that a private cloud may be a costly affair since it is a tailor-made resource. However, it can be scaled and downsized during different seasons to control the operating expenses.

• Public Cloud-

  This is the most prestigious and widely used cloud platform. A third-party cloud service provider owns and maintains the public cloud infrastructure, whose resources are delivered over the internet. This enables the internal IT team to focus on projects that will help the company make progress. As the most common cloud computing technology model, it provides a vast array of resources and tools to meet the increasing organizational needs. The most commonly used ones are DropBox, Office 365. It is very popular due to its relatively low cost (subscription-based models allow organizations to forecast operating costs) and high reliability (industry-leading service providers can provide the best solutions.

• Hybrid Cloud-

  Hybrid clouds are known to be ‘the best of both worlds’ because they incorporate the benefits of on-premise networks and public cloud services. Data and applications in a hybrid cloud environment will switch between private and public clouds for greater flexibility, performance, and deployment options. Hybrid cloud environments allow companies to control their cloud expenses more efficiently by moving resources from a public cloud to a private cloud if necessary. Some services cannot be securely run off-line, and some services cannot be securely performed online.

• The balance between operating costs and visible fault tolerance which a company is willing to tolerate needs to be highly considered by businesses. Companies, for example, may create a private network for confidential data such as intellectual property, consumer data, etc. These details mustn’t be publicly announced so the safest bet is a hybrid cloud. Sensitive IT workloads run on dedicated resources in private clouds, while lower-sensitive and regular workloads are spread across cheap public cloud environments that allow organizations to reduce their capital investment.

Organizations may also benefit from ‘cloud bursting,’ a transition from private to public capital when a certain demand spike is met. This helps companies to have access to more computing power that offers nearly infinite scalability.

As companies resolve their security and compliance concerns by extending the organization’s policies to cloud data and investing in the big gap in cloud skills, more companies can take advantage of the significant benefits cloud computing services can offer.