In this special guest feature, Chris Lawless, Senior Vice President of US Operations for HVR Software, believes that businesses are realizing that the cloud is an optimal solution to many of their data woes. Cloud-based technologies are scalable, affordable … but a lingering question to many, still, is whether their data is safe in the cloud. Chris leads the field engineering, product management, and customer success teams, supporting customers as they adopt a hybrid approach to managing their complex data streams. An industry executive of 20+ years, Chris has an extensive background in data integration and has held positions at Dbvisit Software, Oracle, and GoldenGate.
Businesses are realizing that the cloud is an optimal solution to many of their data woes. Cloud-based technologies are scalable, affordable … but a lingering question to many, still, is whether their data is safe in the cloud.
Not only is your data safe – it is inherently safer in the cloud than on-premise.
For years, data in data warehouses and on-premise systems wasn’t encrypted – even in the financial services and healthcare industries, two industries for which security is now top of mind. It was assumed then that having a firewall surrounding your data center was sufficient for data safety. However, some high-profile incidents have shown that firewalls alone are not enough. Moreover, with on-premise systems, you have to be concerned about data AND physical security. Who has access to your data centers? What about a fire, or weather event?
As recently as a year or two ago, perceptions in the industry changed – now, we believe that data is not only safe in the cloud, but that it’s actually safer. Innovations and advances over the last 5-10 years, including end-to-end encryption, …have greatly minimized the possibility of inadvertent data exposure. We’ve accepted that the cloud is the new normal.
It’s become very important for cloud vendors, in particular, to make sure that cloud-based data is indeed protected, safe, and encrypted. With the growing concern of hacking and data breaches, organizations and vendors are doubling down on security and fraud detection. Advanced fraud detection and alert systems are now available to monitor traffic in real-time for new types of hacking and patterns that don’t quite fit – so that we can sound alarms and activate roadblocks early, preventing breaches from happening in the first place.
Big Business Facilitating Change
This is where the big players come in – Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Because their reputations and business models are based on moving data to the cloud, it’s incumbent upon them to make sure that their customers’ data really is secure; to not make security a priority would be a really bad business move.
These major cloud vendors are able to take advantage of economies of scale to invest in the cloud and make it feasible for companies, big and small, to move their data to the cloud. They have the top security personnel working on their systems and environment, and they can afford to use the latest technology – for threat detection, troubleshooting, or problem solving. And, they are spending considerable resources securing cloud environments, providing security enhancements that benefit every company, whether small or large.
They also have knowledge of best practices and can help you with the questions you’re likely to have. How do you go from on-premise to the cloud? How do you set up the security features? How do you set up the firewall? What are the popular configurations?
Cloud-First, Cloud-Native
The major tech players building the cloud with a dedicated focus over the past several years has meant that companies like HVR and Snowflake are able to build upon these technologies. There are exciting developments coming out of these cloud service providers as they capitalize on what they do best.
It might be obvious already, but cloud environments are inherently different from on-prem data centers. It’s not efficient to just retrofit existing environments into the cloud, and you lose out on leveraging the service benefits of a true cloud-native environment. Instead, cloud technologies are based on a kernel – a seed – of technology that ensure security. Then, additional technology is built on top of that. So, it makes sense to look at the solutions born in the cloud where security was built in from day one.
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