Fundamentals of cloud security

Summary: For many companies, security is still the greatest barrier to implementing cloud initiatives. But it doesn't have to be.
 
By Ram Lakshminarayanan for Stacking up Open Clouds | September 16, 2014
 
Organisational pressure to reduce costs and optimise operations has led many enterprises to investigate cloud computing as a viable alternative to create dynamic, rapidly provisioned resources powering application and storage platforms. Despite potential savings in infrastructure costs and improved business flexibility, security is still the greatest barrier to implementing cloud initiatives for many companies. Information security professionals need to review a staggering array of security considerations when evaluating the risks of cloud computing.
With such a broad scope, how can an organisation adequately assess all relevant risks to ensure that their cloud operations are secure? While traditional security challenges such as loss of data, physical damage to infrastructure, and compliance risk are well known, the manifestation of such threats in a cloud environment can be remarkably different. New technologies, combined with the blurring of boundaries between software-defined and hardware infrastructure in the datacentre, require a different approach.
 
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