Cloud Storage: No more a security nightmare

BANGALORE, INDIA: Though cloud vendors vouch for the security of the data over the cloud, the recent Microsoft outbreak as well as that of Amazon’s S3 platform, increase the weariness in a market which is already bogged with apprehensions.

Of all the challenges, security is the most talked about one.

H Phalachandra, senior director, EMC India Center of Excellence (CoE), says, “Security over the cloud is more of a mental block. Security challenges come in two manners. First, what if someone access my data, which is confidential to me. Second, is more related to compartmentalization. A service provider will not have a single storage block for each customer. He will have a big storage infrastructure, which is made available for different customers.”

The very thought that there are several others also accessing the same cloud, freaks out people thinking that what if they access others' space too.

“However, today, companies in this space have evolved. Stringent SLAs are in place and high security standards are maintained over the cloud,” Phalachandra adds.

Some others like to defer.

Phil Gann, director, Storage Infrastructure and Business Continuity, APAC, Hitachi Data Systems, says “Security is not mere a mental block, it does really exist. Cloud type infrastructure indeed brings in a successful model of operation. However, then you will invest in the security to ensure that these external structures can be be relied upon because data is your business primus. For many, even today, outsourcing business environment to someone else's infrastructure is the biggest step.”

Though smaller enterprises have got along with the cloud, the larger ones are taking their own time in evaluating the pros and cons and are eventually trying to host tertiary or secondary kind of data to cloud, holding on tight to their mission critical data.

For the time being companies will adopt a mode of trail and error before committing to put up business data, a critical part of any business, on a cloud provider's infrastructure, which sits somewhere else.

“The other area that holds back cloud computing to some degree is external cloud. At the security level, you are still in confusion as to what kind of information can be shared across continents legally, or what are the implications of that data being held in another country,” Gann adds.

Manish Gupta, associate director, IBM Research – India, says, “Cloud storage solutions can support explosive data growth while reigning in costs. Cloud computing can help them to develop a flexible cloud storage infrastructure that provides access to storage where and when they need it.”

So you will have to look at the cloud computing environment to say that for this particular thing, I need to ensure that my cloud computing supplier manages that locally or understand how they handle that process. These are the challenges, these are things that are being developed and gradually being understood around cloud computing now.

"Allocating the right amount of data storage to the right users at the right time is an ongoing challenge for organizations of all sizes. The explosive growth of workgroup communities and multiple data volumes demands efficient and cost-effective interdepartmental data sharing. While traditional solutions may offer simplicity, they can lack the crucial scalability to expand the storage space to serve large end-user communities," Gupta adds.

So the market still prefers to stand at a distance and watch how this space evolves. How is India faring in this space.

Let's see it in the next story.

India, yet to make a mark in cloud storage?