A common response that I get when I promote Cloud Computing to enterprises is “Cloud Computing sounds great but is it really safe? I don’t trust Cloud providers for keeping my data safe”. I can understand that the idea of letting go of private and important data into the hands of a distant company can be heart-breaking. It feels like you are leaving your data open to the world with a big fat 0.0.0.0/0 on your firewall, but let me explain how this is actually counter-intuitive.
In most cases, and especially for young startups, running your servers and keeping your databases in big Cloud providers such as AWS, Azure or Google Compute Engine is much safer than keeping it on-Premise.
Let me illustrate this.
Let’s imagine someone actually tries to hack into your servers. Where do you really think that your data is going to be safer? In your enterprise basement where your infrastructure was set up by your own internal team of IT engineers? Or within the infrastructure of a multinational company that is specialised in IT infrastructure, and whose business would be crushed if it was found that its infrastructure was not secure?
I mean, by hosting your servers on the Amazon Web Services Cloud for example, you would be sharing the same infrastructure as the NASA and the US government. If they thought their data would not be safe in the cloud, do you really think they would be hosting their servers there? Cloud providers have teams of specialised IT engineers working everyday to make sure their infrastructures are the safest on the market. Security is actually one of the core values that Cloud providers offer.
Now it might be the idea of “sharing your servers” that scares you. To get a little bit more technical, let’s just say that firewalls are placed at the hypervisor level, so even though you might be sharing the same machine as someone else, it would not make any difference if your servers were located on 2 different continents. And to that I can only repeat the same arguments that I have mentioned above. A business specialised in infrastructure security, and hosting hundreds of multinational companies, is going to offer you a safer environment than your local IT engineers.
The idea of the Cloud being insecure only comes from fear of the unknown.
Thank you for your interesting blogpost! Your blog got me interested, so I looked up some articles regarding the safety of cloud storage. I think when picking a cloud provider, it is important to know how your data are encrypted and what happens if your data somehow gets hacked into. Thus, looking closely at the Service Level Agreement you are signing, and making sure everything is covered there (such as security and compliance requirements). I believe this lowers the risk of storing your data in the cloud. Of course, you never know if your data are really safe, but I agree with you that it is probably safer if it is stored by a big cloud provider who has a ton of experience, than by your own enterprise (unless you are a cloud provider with a ton of experience, that is). I think the cloud will only continue to grow, and security issues will keep arising, but as long as cloud providers keep a close eye on developments and continue to work towards the most secure cloud possible, your company data should be safe. I will definitely keep a close eye on how cloud providers continue to grow and ensure security!