The rise of cloud computing provides new opportunities for businesses and individuals. But with the increasing threats, digital risk management is a critical factor when choosing cloud infrastructure. And since more people are using smartphones and other portable devices for work purposes, it’s essential to choose mobile-friendly cloud options.
Both public and private cloud models are available, but you should first examine the advantages and drawbacks of each option.
Private Cloud Security
Private cloud is also known as enterprise or internal cloud, and it’s usually built for a specific organization. Private clouds are owned and managed by a single organization controlling all the cloud resources. It can be set up on or off the company’s premises.
Private cloud offers more control over resources and security concerns. With greater control and visibility of the cloud infrastructure, businesses can deploy compliance-sensitive workloads without compromising performance and security.
Benefits of Private Cloud Security
Private clouds appeal to businesses that need higher control of the cloud infrastructure. This may include network configurations, server virtualization, and OSes. The advantages of private cloud security include:
- Better security –Private clouds are designed for a specific organization. The hardware, connection, and data storage are optimized for better security.
- Better performance – a private cloud resides within the organization’s intranet and is often behind a firewall. While it has the same capabilities as public clouds, it has less exposure to security threats.
- Higher levels of control – the private cloud is built to ensure increased scalability of computing and storage. The resources are not shared with other users, and internal IT teams manage the cloud’s configurations.
- Flexibility – private clouds are more flexible, making it easy to transform the resources business needs.
- Exclusive environment – utilize secure environments out of reach from other organizations and unauthorized persons.
Drawbacks of Private Cloud Security
- Higher costs – private clouds tend to be more expensive since they require sophisticated hardware and regular maintenance. Typically, you need the hardware, operating systems, and licenses for various cloud software. However, after the initial setup, you may finda private cloud to be cheaper than a public cloud.
- Maintenance issues – maintenance for private clouds can be time-consuming. Since the investment needs continuous support, organizations have to deal with theissues of hiring internal IT teams.
- Mobile difficulties – mobile device users may experience limitations due to the complex security measures.
Businesses use private cloud services when they want better control of cloud resources and sensitive data. Private clouds are more prevalent in highly regulated industries like financial institutions and government agencies.
Security Challenges and Risks
Some organizations may not have sufficient physical security found in third-party data centers. This may expose the data to various threats. Unlike private cloud infrastructure, public cloud vendors often have redundant data centers meaning they have data facilities spread throughout the country.
Private clouds come with the challenges of under-buying or over-buying. Therefore when maintaining the infrastructure, capacity expansion often requires more hardware. If you don’t acquire enough hardware and your IT needs grow, you might compromise the performance.
Businesses using a private cloud need to buy and install the updates whenever new software becomes available. Regular software updates may be expensive and time-consuming. While some organizations may use outdated software, it exposes them to severe security threats. Also, software issues may affect cloud performance and lead to downtime.
Public Cloud Security
Public clouds refer to cloud resources where third-party providers deliver the services over the internet. Public cloud is an on-demand, shared infrastructure, and an organization may use multiple types of cloud services including, SaaS, Paas, and IaaS. This form of cloud computing comes with many choices regarding computing resources and solutions to cater to growing business needs.
The services may be free or subscription-based, where pricing depends on resources consumption. Public cloud providers are responsible for the setup and maintaining the resources.
Benefits of Public Cloud Security
Companies often choose public cloud solutions for various reasons such as service scalability, lower Capex, and easy management. Some of the benefits include the following:
- Reduces hardware costs – a public cloud comes with low capital costs. It offers low entry barriers, and the infrastructure provides economies of scale. With a pay-per-use model, the payments are based on the resources you use. Public clouds eliminate the need to buy hardware or hire in-house IT personnel since the third-parties host and manage the infrastructure.
- High Flexibility, reliability, and Scalability – on-demand cloud resources come with high scalability and flexibility to cater to growing IT needs for your business.
- Eliminates maintenance costs – third-party vendors offer public cloud services; therefore, you don’t have to hire IT teams to maintain the system.
Drawbacks of Public Cloud Security
Bigger companies with massive IT infrastructures may find public clouds less appealing. Some of the drawbacks and challenges may include the following;
- CSP security may be insufficient – in some cases, you may find that a cloud vendor’s cybersecurity tools, methods, and processes are inadequate and unsuitable for highly-sensitive data.
- Insufficient infrastructure visibility – multiple organizations share the same cloud infrastructure. But large companies may require the ability to access and analyze alerts and logs. Most cloud vendors that specialize in SaaS often restrict access to security information. And that’s because the infrastructure is designed to simplify management tasks.
Security Challenges and Risks
Businesses that use the public cloud tend to believe that a cloud vendor is responsible for protecting the data. However, cloud providers focus on securing the cloud infrastructure and not the customer data. Therefore, companies should be accountable for the security of any data on the cloud.
Appropriate control of cloud data often depends on the company’s data access management. Typically, most cloud threats stem from comprised internal accounts. Business partners, employees, and contractors may pose significant security threats.
Bottom Line
When considering cloud computing and security, no single infrastructure is suitable for everyone. Typically, the right choice depends on specific use cases and limitations. Therefore, it’s essential to assess the IT needs for all your applications and data.
Once you identify your needs, you can deploy the services in the private or public cloud. Ideally, it’s best to choose an option that makes the most sense from a security and cost perspective.
