Disaster Recovery Journal

By far, the biggest concerns surrounding cloud computing are issues regarding security and privacy in the cloud.  The notion of giving up total control of important, sensitive data scares people, as it is no longer “safe” behind the corporate wall.

A lot of people fear that moving their data to be stored offsite will expose it to various risks and security breaches.  However, the cloud is actually a very safe place to store and share data.  Cloud providers offer varying levels of security, but you can also “beef up” your security by various measures such as integrating your encryption key management solution with your cloud management solution.

In today's fast-paced society, companies of all sizes need affordable ways to deliver quality IT services reliably and continuously.  One of the key benefits of cloud computing, one that is also often overlooked, is how cloud computing can help ensure business continuity, as well as speedy disaster recovery.  Cloud hosting offers a low-cost disaster recovery and business continuity solution for small to midsize businesses and a more cost-effective DR alternative to larger, cost-conscious corporations.

With the cloud as your disaster recovery solution, you can use your in-house systems to run your core business and work with a cloud hosting provider for your business continuity and disaster protection.  With cloud hosting, your data and software are replicated automatically in the cloud, creating increased redundancy.  You don't have to buy extra hardware or software to mirror your data center environment.  Instead, cloud servers can be easily partitioned to create multiple environments in the cloud, and these cloud servers can be spun up and configured in a matter of minutes.  In addition, with cloud computing and cloud storage, you only pay for the resources you use, so the cost is minimal.

A private cloud is infrastructure operated solely for a single organization, whether managed internally or by a third-party and hosted internally or externally.  Put simply, it is a layer of cloud applications running on private, dedicated hardware.  By addressing any special privacy and/or security concerns, private clouds offer all the benefits of cloud technologies to your business, along with an infrastructure dedicated entirely to your use.

If desired, private cloud services offer the ability to host applications on your company’s own infrastructure, thus providing more control for enterprises that require it.  Since many companies may have compliance or regulatory issues preventing them from jumping into public cloud, the cloud service tiers are replicated within a private cloud environment, behind the firewall, and maintained within the parameters of the host organization, allowing them to keep their existing infrastructure if desired.

Sometimes after you migrate your business data and applications to the cloud via cloud servers, it is easy to forget that data security is something that should be consistently monitored.  There are a few things to consider after your company’s migration to the cloud to ensure your data stays safe at all times.