What are the risks of Cloud Computing?
Download PDF
Introduction
One of the main benefits of using the Cloud is to reduce IT costs. Moving to Cloud, businesses would not need to procure a physical server and all the related infrastructure to implement the applications. Also, if there is a hardware failure, power failure, natural disaster, or some other crisis, businesses would not worry about database backups, disaster recovery, or failover systems, because the data in the Cloud is backed up across the networked servers, and all the hardware and software are maintained by the Cloud service providers. Thus, organizations would save a lot on the large initial capital expenditure and operating expenses.
However, in Cloud computing environments, it’s important to note that there are risks involved, even with large Cloud providers.
Technical Risks
When you store your business, employees, and customer data in the Cloud, you’re placing your complete trust on the Cloud service provider to secure and safeguard your data. Cloud service providers invest lots of resources and money to implement and improve Cloud security, but still by placing your data in the Cloud as opposed to in-house you’re opening up to security risks. Also, everyone including hackers knows if they can access Clouds, they can get huge amounts of data. So, there are hundreds of thousands of cyberattacks around the world every day.
The 2021 Cost of a Data Breach Report, showed the impact of data breaches and breach costs on the Cloud model and Cloud migration. “Cloud modernization appeared to help decrease breach response times. While companies that experienced a breach during a major Cloud migration had higher costs, those who were further along in their overall Cloud modernization strategy were able to detect and respond to incidents more effectively. “, as mentioned to John Zorabedian.
Hence, in order to protect and secure your data in the Cloud, the best practices like encryption, two-factor authentication, auditing, reviewing, and rotating access keys and credentials, a breach should be transparent and welldocumented, which can reduce the security risk to some extent.
Organizational Risks
Compliance is another important risk that must be considered when moving to the Cloud. If it’s your own personal data, like email, photos or documents, you do not have to worry about legal risks. But if it’s an organization that deals with financial data, healthcare data, credit card data, or any other sensitive data, then by law, the organization is responsible for protecting that data. It needs to know where the data is stored, who is allowed to access it, and how to put measures in the right places. There are many local and international regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, etc.
By moving to the Cloud, Organizations are relying on the Cloud service provider to protect data and adhere to these relevant local and international regulations. Organizations may still be liable if the Cloud service fails to live up to the task when having a data breach.
Risk of Loss of Cloud Data and Services
Data in the Cloud and services are typically accessed over the internet. So, the speed of access to Cloud services and data is limited by the internet connection. If an Internet connection is lost, then the access to Cloud data and services will be lost too. Fortunately, Cloud service providers have SLA’s which are Service Level Agreements, and it guarantees Cloud providers to meet up to 99.9% of uptime.
Conclusion
It’s always good to keep these risks in mind before moving to the Cloud. This isn’t to say that the Cloud is bad or that we should be against the Cloud. But, it’s not nearly as clean and worry-free as you might assume. Having good backups, even of Cloud data, is never a bad idea and helps curb the risk of lots of these potential issues.
https://securityintelligence.com/posts/whats-new-2021-cost-of-a-data-breachreport/
https://www.coxblue.com/19-tips-andbest-practices-for-protecting-andsecuring-your-data-in-the-Cloud/