Cybersecurity is challenging, but that shouldn't stop you from moving to the cloud. Source: Shutte

Cybersecurity is challenging, but that shouldn’t stop you from moving to the cloud. Source: Shutte

Why security concerns shouldn’t halt your move to the cloud

CYBERSECURITY is a massive challenge for companies, especially for those considering a move to the cloud. However, that isn’t reason enough the halt the migration to the cloud.

Moving to the cloud isn’t a fad. It provides many economic and operational benefits to the company. It’s why Gartner believes the worldwide public cloud services market will grow 17.3 percent this year to total US$206.2 billion.

One of the most interesting ways for organizations to move to the cloud is to buy into a service offering on the cloud, say, for example, an accounting package or a CRM package sold as a SaaS (software as a service) offering.

According to Gartner’s findings, SaaS is the largest segment of the cloud market, with revenues expected to grow 17.8 percent to reach US$85.1 billion in 2019.

However, the right way to migrate to the cloud is to host both data and applications on the cloud. Obviously, this is challenging for most organizations despite the fact that the cloud is no longer considered cutting-edge.

In an exclusive interview with Tech Wire Asia ahead of the ConnecTechAsia2019 Summit in Singapore, Cloud Security Alliance Director Anthony Lim explained why security is still such a big concern for organizations and why they should not let it hinder their move to the cloud.

“Basically if you boil down cloud security right to the bottom-line, you realize that companies are concerned about the loss of control that moving to the cloud entails.”

According to Lim, moving to the cloud isn’t as simple as it sounds because the company doesn’t really have any control over the infrastructure that it is hosting its data on.

As a result, companies are unable to come to a logical conclusion about whether or not they meet the cloud governance best-practices and compliance requirements — which are critical to moving to the cloud with confidence.

“What can be done? In a nutshell, we cannot tell businesses not to move to the cloud. Instead, we need to advocate that they adopt a ‘caveat emptor or buyer-beware’ attitude and are constantly vigilant when it comes to their cloud presence.”

In Lim’s experience, businesses must first get an idea of what applications, services, and data they want to use with regard to cloud services, then they should get a clear idea of the workflow of each, and learn where the storage points for the services are.

Armed with this information, organizations need to work with service providers to get a clear idea of what cyber-security protection processes and solutions are in place.

Finally, Lim advises that businesses must identify any gaps and make a decision about how they can secure their cloud presence and take precautions to prevent loss of control over data and critical workflows.

Overall, moving to the cloud isn’t optional and Lim encourages business leaders to think about moving to the cloud more confidently but also carefully. The caveat-emptor attitude, after all, is a process that requires continuous vigilance.