A lack of understanding about security risks is one of the key factors holding back cloud computing. Report after report after report harps on security as the main speed bump slowing the pace of cloud adoption. But what tends to be overlooked, even by cloud advocates, is that overall security threats are changing as organizations move from physical environments to virtual ones and on to cloud-based ones. Viruses, malware and phishing are still concerns, but […]
compliance
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Cloud computing is a boon, but its vectors need to be kept on a short leash, says Mushegh Hakhinian, security architect at IntraLinks. The pace of business today requires that critical information be accessible anywhere, anytime, often among both internal and external parties. Hosted services are an important tool to enable this, but while the tools facilitate communication, they bring additional risk and challenges to the firms that use them. Technology is rapidly evolving to […]
Given all the hype about the software-as-a-service model, you’d think that it could be applied to every category of software. Not so, says a new report from Forrester Research Inc. In fact, SaaS will be “a disruptive force” in software categories that account for about a quarter of global software spending but will have “little or no effect” on many of 123 market segments studied, Forrester analysts Liz Herbert and Andrew Bartels wrote. Forrester said […]
When it comes to enterprise computing environments, the skies are getting increasingly cloudy–and dealing with that will mean covering up with flexible, dynamic security. This was the message of Art Coviello, executive chairman of EMC’s RSA security division, during his keynote at the RSA Conference today, in San Francisco. Last year, he told the audience, his speech was about the promise of the cloud–the assertion that it’s possible to achieve security and do it better. […]
The benefits of cloud services are often cited. They’re low-cost. They’re scalable. They’re permanently state-of-the-art. However, at least with traditional IT outsourcing, the customer can negotiate a balanced, even a customer-friendly contract. Cloud customers usually have little option but to accept standard T&Cs. It is a utility model, where multiple users each buy a slice of the same pre-existing service. Providers tend to have the “take it or leave it” mentality of a gas or […]
The biggest obstacle facing public cloud computing today is security. The major concerns include: internal and external threats, data collection, privacy and compliance. An essential part of any cloud implementation is the cloud service provider’s ability to have a secure infrastructure to protect customer data and guard against unauthorized access. Today’s public cloud is becoming more secure than on-premise computing. Cloud service providers are able to provide better security than enterprises in the following ways: […]
While the potential benefits of cloud computing, such as resource flexibility, are appealing to many IT executives, security and regulatory concerns are either limiting or preventing its use by Wall Street financial firms. That was the consensus of many attendees at the High Performance Computing in Financial Markets Conference held here Monday. Mats Andersson, CTO of Nasdaq’s OMX Exchange, said Nasdaq uses cloud computing systems, but only inside the company’s firewall and only to access […]
Despite the hype, the virtualization scenario in India is laced with implementation challenges and cost pitfalls. Mehak Chawla finds out the causes for reluctant adoption and what needs to be done for virtualization to live up to its image In a newsletter issued by an IT giant for its US customers last week, I stumbled upon the sentence “We think virtualization will be the hottest technology in 2011. It shall be adopted across verticals and […]
The market downturn gave impetus to cloud computing by forcing organizations to find new ways to press forward with IT innovation despite their constrained resources—so they could continue to improve their competitive position, boost productivity and gain actionable market insight. In other words, after years of talk about aligning IT and business, alignment has quickly become life and death. If IT can’t reduce costs while keeping a step ahead of an increasingly dynamic business climate, […]
Now is the time for virtual desktops. There are a lot of people in the industry saying that you should wait. We ask why? There are serious savings in support and energy costs to be garnered along with significant other factors that will increase agility and lower TCO. Don’t wait. If you follow the advice and steps outlined below, and build a solid business case, you will be successful. Virtual desktops are the hottest virtualization […]