In the first of our two cloud blogs, we looked at how moving building management and other operational activities to the cloud can bring huge benefits in terms of cost, efficiency and flexibility. But those are by no means the only advantages as the mature cloud services available today can also offer significant advantages in terms of security and future expansion.
Anyone who has paid even passing attention to technology issues over the last few years will be aware of the increasing threat of cyberattack. In both the public and private sectors, there have been high-profile examples of companies who have paid insufficient attention to data security. As a result, thousands of people’s personal information has been compromised – a development that has recently become much more damaging to companies themselves, with countries implementing the EU GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) now able to impose massive fines for data breaches.
In the earlier days of the cloud, one of the arguments against remote data storage was the presumption that it was somehow less secure than having everything located on-site. Always a dubious contention given the widely varying security set-ups in different firms, it’s now as good as without foundation as most leading cloud platforms and BMS providers have consistently invested in security. These typically include frequent stress-testing against existing and emerging threats, as well as specialist teams to track the evolution of cyber-risks.
Cybercrime is a moving target
Priva’s own cloud services are based on one of the world’s leading platforms, Azure by Microsoft. Leading banking and legal organisations – for whom data integrity is an absolute top priority – are among those to have adopted Azure, which relies on a cloud built with customised hardware. It also has security controls integrated into both hardware and firmware, and features added protection against threats such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDos) – in other words, a calculated attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a server or network. More details on Priva’s cloud architecture can be found via the download below.
Internet security is the very definition of a moving target given that new threats are coming up all the time. Recent data released by cyber education company Cybint (1) indicates that SMEs are being widely targeted, with 43% of all cyber-attacks directed towards small businesses. This has potentially serious implications for companies whose core data operations are in the hands of a small in-house IT team or occasional help from outside contractors.
As the diversity of attacks increases, it will become even more difficult to keep on top of all the cyber-threats. In this context it is even more logical to shift responsibility to a service based on a cloud technology such as Microsoft Azure, which is supported by a global team of more than 3,500 cybersecurity experts focused on safeguarding business assets and data.
In this way, a cloud-based solution offers a very specific form of future-proofing. Above all, it makes it much easier to scale your IT usage as your needs change. Having rack-rooms full of old IT equipment is no longer an issue when your data needs – however they might change over time – can be managed off-site in the cloud.
The events of this year have reminded us all that the future is very much subject to change. But with its inherent ability to adapt to and protect a company’s most important assets outside of its people, migrating to the cloud remains a sound investment.
Source:
(1) Cyberint, 15 Alarming Cyber Security Facts and Stats (June 2020), https://www.cybintsolutions.com/cyber-security-facts-stats/
Article supplied and written by Content Coms
