Cloud computing concepts and applications

Cloud and all of its benefits have begun taking hold in today's society. This trend of outsourcing important computer operations has been met with some resistance. The purpose of this essay is to explore the risks involved with cloud computing. This essay will argue that there are four main risks that potential cloud users must be aware of before fully adopting it: security, compliance, data loss, outages.

Security

The largest and most obvious risk to cloud computing is the ability it has to manage the security issues of the customer. Byrne reported that "in a recent survey of 4,500 high-level IT professionals in 83 countries, ISACA (the Information Systems Audit and Control Association) discovered that organizations fear the risks of using public cloud services. 69% of North American respondents believed that the risks of using the cloud outweigh the benefits." This is a problem for those who have envisioned the cloud as sweeping over the computing world.

Why are so many afraid to use the cloud? In my opinion the cloud does nothing practical to secure the information. Hackers are much like thieves and will target sources where there is much higher chance for a larger payout. Cloud computing storage centers are high-profile targets for those who are seeking this type of information. It just makes more sense for individuals and individual companies to take some personal accountability for the sensitive material that is contained in their computing files.

Compliance

Another risk involved with cloud computing models is their laws that apply to such systems. Complying with the many rules and regulations imposed on many legislative organizations and corporations leaves many holes for this stored information to fall through. Winkler argued that "You must recognize that the safety of confidential data and its governance are two separate issues. As part of due diligence, you'll need to fully understand a provider's privacy governance along with their security practices and guidelines. Personal information is subject to privacy laws. Other classes of business information and anything related to national security is subject to much more stringent regulations and laws. National security information and processes benefit from a strong and developed corpus of law, regulation and guidance."

Data Loss

Cloud computing systems have a tendency to fail. This failure presents much risk towards the potential users of this technology. Although the cloud is very useful for allowing access to information to many different users, this dispersion puts this information at risk from being manipulated or lost. Clouds in real life are very fluid and easy to disperse, this does not bode well for companies or individuals who are looking to retain "hard" data in for their computing needs. The trade off is clear that easy accessibility to information automatically puts it at risk for manipulation or loss.

Outages

The risk of a computing outage is not unique to cloud computing systems however there may be more risk involved with this approach. No system is 100% safe and many cloud systems are prone to failure. Kleymen reported that a " powerful storm in June knocked out an entire data center which was owned by Amazon. What was hosted in that data center? Amazon Web Services. All affected AWS businesses in that data center were effectively down. Cloud-centric companies like Instagram, Netflix and Pinterest were all made production-ineffective for over six hours." It seems that the bigger you are the harder you fall.