There is a lot of debate these days over the security of the cloud. Many businesses have been apprehensive about making the move to the cloud, for fear of not having control of their data like they do in-house. However, the truth of the matter is that the cloud is incredibly secure. The cloud offers many options for security and compliance and on many levels, they are as secure if not more secure than a traditional on-premise configuration. Of course some companies may never want to fully relinquish control of their data and for that, there is the hybrid cloud configuration.
Here are a few reasons as to why the cloud is incredibly secure, if not more secure than your in-house infrastructure:
Enterprise Level Encryption
Cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services have enterprise level encryption protocols, ensuring that all data stored in the cloud is encrypted and secure. For some companies, the problem is they don’t have the budget or resources to implement such high levels of encryption. Or, many organizations believe that risk for data stored in-house is limited because it lives behind the company’s firewall and so they don’t see the need for encrypting data that lives on-premise. With the scalable, “pay-as-you-go” pricing model the cloud offers, users are able to encrypt their data by default, and at a fraction of the cost of encrypting and monitoring data stored on site.
Secured Transmission of Data to and From the Cloud
Data transmitted to and from the cloud is encrypted and as such, is at less of a risk of being compromised as opposed to sending data over unsecured network connections. In fact, some cloud providers, like Amazon Web Services offer virtual private networks and “direct connect” options for securely moving data from on-site to the cloud. Often, when employees access or transmit data over their internal intranet, the data isn’t encrypted or secured as it is (ideally) only being transferred in-house. With the cloud, your data is secured going to and coming from the cloud, reducing the risk of having an unwanted third party intervening and gaining access to sensitive information.
Built In Security Monitoring
While all organizations should have their own network and security monitoring in place (either by in-house IT staff or through a managed IT services provider), the cloud does offer its own level of security monitoring. Service providers such as Azure and AWS have their own security professionals on staff who keep an eye on things, run security audits, and ensure that the cloud infrastructure is as secure as possible. Due to the fact that customers entrust the cloud provider to securely store their data as well as providing guaranteed uptime and access, the cloud providers take all of the steps the can to make sure that their infrastructures operate efficiently and are as secure as possible.
