Cloud computing is an exciting recent development that has become an essential way for companies to reduce costs and create useful services. Cloud computing is expanding at an astounding rate, and most analysts see that trend continuing well into the future. However, this software is a completely new animal that has been developed within the last few years. Most companies and IT professionals are still becoming familiar with it, and that means that many, if not most, cloud servers are not fully secured.
The biggest security issue that every IT professional managing a cloud server has to worry about is a hacker gaining access to their system. Although cloud computing can give you many things that seem like benefits, they can also become cons under certain circumstances. Software that runs on cloud servers saves most user information in these servers instead of the computers of individuals. Having all of your data stored in the cloud can be a huge advantage when it comes to IT costs or providing services to your clients, but it also presents the possibility that, if someone accessed your cloud servers, they would have all of your information within their grasp. For many companies, that data doesn’t just include their own sensitive information but also the personal information (e.g. credit card numbers or addresses) of their clients. Not only can this be an expensive PR nightmare, it could also bring about serious legal troubles. This is a nightmare that all too many businesses have experienced.
Many existing tools do not work on cloud servers . After all, this technology is very new. A lot of your old software, the tools that you have grown comfortable with using, was not designed with the level of robustness to operate in the new and foreign landscape of cloud servers . Yet another security nightmare might unfold if you are relying on software like this to protect your cloud servers . That software might fail altogether or, more likely, have loopholes that a hacker could take advantage of. Loopholes like this can easily arise when software is being used in an environment that it wasn’t designed for. A lot of companies find themselves in the position where they cannot properly secure their cloud with the legacy security tools they have, but they also cannot manually address their security issues because their IT staff just cannot scale with the system. This is why businesses need to use IT solutions that are designed for the cloud.
If a hacker does gain access to your servers or they malfunction in some way, you could be in a much bigger whole than if you weren’t operating in the cloud. In the cloud, the servers run most of the software themselves and the computer interacting with it does very little. Well, if your cloud goes down, then no one is going to be able to run that software. If every computer ran that software independently, then an infection in one would not risk all the others. That is the risk of having everything centralized, and it is why security is so important for your cloud servers .
Author bio: Hi, I’m Jonathan, a free-lance writer, one of my passions is to write and I have written about many topics including Technology, Finance and Travel etc. I write this article on behalf of checkmarx.com which provides online security for any kind of sensitive information for companies.
