Hybrid clouds complicate matters for security experts

Vinod Krishnan, CIO, Indus Towers

"Cloud provides a level of abstraction and location independence to business continuity, both of which are essential in a business-critical uptime scenario. Moving to cloud implies a level of independence with regards to facility and infrastructure that gives substantial flexibility to business leadership by dynamically reconfiguring operations and critical functions for service continuity. 

While it may seem like a distant requirement to consider taking all applications on the cloud given the latency and the security concerns, it still helps enormously to have capacity and resources on tap. Moreover, from a CIO’s perspective, it is a vital element of the business continuity plans.

Cloud is therefore almost the only option for organizations to cater to rapid growth cycles. A business can later take the call to “regularize” their on-premise footprint to accommodate the growth and this may therefore not be permanent but on a short notice, it is certainly the best if not the only option.

Security breaches are a complex function of people, technology and process that at best is difficult to quantify. The trade-offs between security and compliance on one hand and convenience and user friendliness on the other is well established and the solution to this trade-off is a matter of building awareness (early on), maturing to a culture of information security that takes care of people and process equally. 

Hybrid clouds complicate matters for security experts but, if properly configured, offer substantial visibility into the actions of employees, associates and partners in a way that anomalies can be quickly detected and addressed. Toolsets are now substantially more evolved and user-friendly, leading to quicker detection and analysis of incidents and threats. The network effect of the community of security partners and users in responding to threats and incidents also kicks in much quicker, ensuring that breaches are addressed or mitigated quicker than before. An intelligent mixture of on-premise, private and public clouds is the best hedge for an optimal security profile.”