Cloud Computing Archives

Security in a hybrid cloud

May 3, 2017

One of the biggest concerns around hybrid cloud for organizations is data security. According to Gartner, 38 percent of companies who don’t plan to use public cloud cited security and privacy as the main reasons. It’s very logical (and necessary) to ask how the cloud will protect your most valuable asset – your data. What are the biggest security challenges in hybrid cloud adoption? According to experts, the biggest security concerns in a hybrid environment are compliance, lack of encryption, poor SLAs, data redundancy, and data privacy and visibility. Some clouds are more equipped to handle these challenges than others, and it’s important to make sure you have the cloud that addresses your needs best. Let’s look at the above barriers and see how they can be addressed. Compliance: Whether your data is moving from cloud to cloud or a cloud to a physical server, it’s critical that you and your cloud service provider (whether that’s you or someone else) have the correct controls in place. This is especially important in today’s mobile world and BYOD. What should you do? Make sure your provider can pass third-party audits as part of a standard check for regulatory compliance. But remember, just because…

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3 benefits of moving to a managed hybrid cloud

May 2, 2017

According to a recent UBS Evidence Lab study, 60 percent of IT administrators and CIOs surveyed agreed that hybrid solutions make the most sense. And data from a recent Synergy report said that spending on private and hybrid cloud services is growing at 45 percent per year. With a fully managed hybrid cloud, companies get all the benefits without the challenges and stress of maintaining it themselves. Below are a few reasons why multi-cloud strategies are becoming so popular. Core benefits of moving to a hybrid cloud A hybrid solution gives you the ability to divide up your application into different parts (such as containers) and put them where they run best, essentially scaling your resources in the most appropriate way for them. For example, if you need a low latency, high performance application, a private cloud might be your best choice. If you need to test your application or are running a program with varying peaks in demand, it might be better supported in the public cloud. No matter which cloud you’re in, if you have the right partner, you don’t have to worry about the hardware and can avoid an expensive hardware refresh and the CAPEX associated with…

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8 considerations when moving to hybrid cloud

April 25, 2017

Like any major decision (buying a house, choosing a pet, changing careers), certain considerations need to be made. In IT, moving to hybrid cloud is no exception to this rule. If you’re considering adopting a multi-cloud strategy, here are some important questions to put on your to-do list: The most important consideration is your migration/onramp strategy. More specifically, what is it? This question might sound vague, but it’s very important. What’s your scaling model look like? Do you have backup in case of failure during the migration? What about disaster recovery? Coming up with a detailed plan of attack will make the rest of your considerations easy to manage or solve. Managing your strategy: How will you take charge of your new hybrid cloud environment? Once you’ve come up with your strategy, it’s time to take control of it. Whether you’re managing it yourself or considering a managed hybrid cloud provider, you’ll want to make sure either they or you can answer the following questions. Billing management: Hybrid cloud offers great opportunities to reduce your IT costs, but there’s also the danger of losing control of your spend. Let’s go back to a question in the first consideration: What’s your scaling…

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Are virtual private clouds as secure as private clouds?

August 26, 2016

Virtual private clouds are a hot ticket these days—everyone wants them. We know they aren’t the same as a fully private cloud. But do the differences extend to security, too? Let’s start by reviewing the differences between private and virtual private clouds. If you want your environment completely dedicated to you and to own everything, a private cloud is for you. The equipment will be on a site or data center you own, so you have total control over your infrastructure. If you want that control but don’t want to worry about the hassle of infrastructure hosting, management and maintenance, then a hosted private cloud is for you. Security in a virtual private cloud In a private cloud, resources are distributed across multiple physical servers. This allows for redundancy in equipment and gives you a smooth transition in the event of a hardware failure. With a virtual private cloud, you don’t have to worry about the infrastructure, but it is not yours alone. Instead, you have an isolated patch of cloud on hardware shared with other users. When you configure a private IP subnet, VLAN and VPN, your organization has in effect created a private cloud and can access the environment…

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What is a Virtual Private Cloud?

July 22, 2016

You already know that there are three major types of clouds: Public, Private and Hybrid. Now, there’s a newer player in the game: Virtual Private Clouds. What makes these different from public and private clouds, and what is the benefit? Is it just a fancy name for public cloud, or is it a private one? Virtual Private Clouds (VPC) are related to the public cloud, but they are not the same. Instead of sharing resources and space in a public infrastructure, you get a changeable allotment of resources to configure. There is a certain level of isolation between you and other users, via a private IP subnet and virtual communication construct (such as a VLAN) on a per user basis. This ensures a secure method of remotely accessing your cloud resources. This isolation within a public cloud lends the name “virtual private” because you are essentially operating a private cloud within a public cloud. That also doesn’t mean Virtual Private Clouds and private clouds are the same. Private clouds are entirely dedicated to your organization, and that includes the hardware. Virtual Private clouds do not have the same hardware dedication; it just creates a more secure environment on public infrastructure. Think…

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Five common cloud computing myths

April 5, 2016

Despite the phenomenal growth of cloud computing and the increase of knowledge that comes with it, there are still many myths about the cloud that persist even to this day. If you’re thinking about moving to the cloud or are already there, there are some beliefs you should know that might cause you to rethink your cloud strategy. Here are 5 common cloud computing myths: Moving to the cloud is a one-man or one-team decision. Contrary to what you might think, adopting cloud strategy is not a one-man show. It takes a team to determine the best move for your business. And just because cloud technology is an IT-related concept does not mean that it’s solely up to the IT team to make the decision. There are financial and executive management decisions to be considered, too. If a cloud strategy is embraced by the top level of management as well as the IT team, the adoption process is much more likely to go smoothly, and employees are more likely to receive the training they need. Putting as much as you can in the cloud will make your life easier. Not every solution is a cloud-fits-all. There are some parts of your production…

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Benefits of cloud-based disaster recovery explained

February 25, 2016

With the growing popularity of the cloud, more and more companies are turning to it for their production sites. But what about cloud-based disaster recovery? Does it offer the same kind of benefits? As disaster recovery can be complex, time-consuming and very expensive, it pays to plan ahead to figure out just what your business needs. Putting your disaster recovery plan in the cloud can help alleviate some of the fears that come with setting it up. Here are four big benefits to cloud-based disaster recovery: Faster recovery The big difference between cloud-based disaster recovery and traditional recovery practices is the difference in RPO and RTO. With cloud-based DR, your site has the capability to recover from a warm site right away, drastically reducing your RPO and RTO times from days, or even weeks, to hours. Whereas traditional disaster recovery involved booting up from a cold site, cloud recovery is different. Thanks to virtualization, the entire server, including the operating system, applications, patches and data are encapsulated into a single software bundle or virtual server. This virtual server can be copied or backed up to an offsite data center and spun up on a virtual host in a matter of minutes in…

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Encrypting Data to Meet HIPAA Compliance

December 7, 2015

To address the question of whether or not to use data encryption when it comes to meeting HIPAA compliance and keeping patient health information (PHI) protected, let’s revisit the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA): A covered entity must, in accordance with §164.306… Implement a mechanism to encrypt and decrypt electronic protected health information.” (45 CFR § 164.312(a)(2)(iv)) If you choose not to encrypt data, the HIPAA Security Rule states you must implement an equivalent solution to meet the regulatory requirement. The law leaves encryption open to interpretation since covered entities vary when it comes to network and network usage, depending on the type and size of business. While HIPAA and HITECH address the security and privacy of PHI with more of a policy and procedures-oriented approach with no strict parameters for what type of technology to use, encryption is typically considered a best practice when it comes to protecting sensitive data. A few recommendations when it comes to data encryption: Don’t use public FTP (File Transfer Protocol) if you need to transfer patient data to and from payers or other business associates. To err on the safe side would be to combine two methods of encryption –…

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Are the odds of data recovery ever in your favor?

November 4, 2014

Way back in 2011 — when Prince William was getting married and Jennifer Lawrence was just getting cast as Katniss in the Hunger Games — Gartner predicted that 30 percent of midsize companies would have adopted recovery-as-a-service (RaaS) to support IT operations recovery by today. That projection was a 29-percent increase based on 2011 numbers. So what has your business been doing since 2011? If you’ve managed to get your data offsite — and ensure its security in the backup environment — you’ve accomplished a key part of protecting your business in case of a disaster. The tricky part comes when the disaster actually occurs, and you are forced to recover the data. Depending on your choice of backup, your odds for recovery can vary widely. Where do you fall on the spectrum of recovery confidence? Are you the picture of confidence, or the grim realization that you’ve just stepped into an uncertain, unfriendly challenge? A few key choices can improve your odds of recovering systems under duress of having your production environment down. 1. Do the hard planning work … Now If you haven’t already assessed the critical systems of the business and prioritized which must be recovered first,…

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Is Apple dying because it ‘doesn’t think about the cloud’? That’s debatable, but future of cloud computing is not

May 12, 2014

Highly successful tech venture capitalist Fred Wilson created some waves last week when he predicted Apple wouldn’t be among the top three most important tech companies in the world by 2020. Speaking at a conference in New York City, he said he envisions Google, Facebook and “one that we’ve never heard of” making up that triumvirate. Why would his dismiss the current largest tech company in the world (Apple’s first quarter revenues of $43.7 billion was more than Google, Facebook and <insert name of any company you’ve never heard of here> combined). According to a TechCrunch article, he said Apple is “too rooted in hardware” and not sufficiently tied into the cloud. “I think hardware is increasingly becoming a commodity,” he said. “Their stuff in the cloud is largely not good. I don’t think they think about data and the cloud.” Of course, Wilson – who has backed huge success stories like Twitter and Tumblr – has been wrong about Apple before. As CNN Money points out, he dumped all of his Apple stock at $91.36 per share in January 2009. The day of his comments at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Apple closed at $600.96. (Note: Wilson said he sold…

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