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Microsoft recently announced their 2021 partners of the year. These prestigious awards have been running since 2019 and focus on the service and innovation provided by partner companies in over 100 countries.
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It’s not easy to build a robust cloud migration strategy. What are the pitfalls you should be aware of before building a cloud migration strategy?
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Though it was hard to choose just three, here are some of the announcements from the event that stood out to us.
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The global pandemic has fundamentally changed the way we work. It’s also exposed significant security gaps and generated a spike in cyberattacks.
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The IT industry is growing at an unprecedented rate. Research from ISG indicates that global spending on IT and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) in the first quarter of 2021 has grown by 11% since last year – $17bn of spending globally in a quarter.
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For as many years as the public cloud has been around, so has been the debate over whether or not it’s secure.
When AWS launched in 2006 and Azure shortly thereafter in 2008, the public cloud was considered uncharted territory. IT professionals didn’t know whether to trust it or be weary. This was much like in the early 2000s when virtualization technologies became financially possible for smaller organizations, yet many companies chose to stick with physical servers. It was only after years of repeated use and testing did organizations view the technology as safe and worthy of adoption.
We’re seeing a similar trend with the public cloud. As more companies test and adopt the technology, it has matured and established a strong foothold in the market. However, despite the trend towards widespread adoption, some IT professionals continue to approach it with skepticism.
Here are answers to three questions often asked about public cloud security.
This is a large and deeply debated topic. To cut to the chase: No. In our opinion, the public cloud is not weaker than on-premise implementations. Sure, this may have been the case years ago, but today, the public cloud has matured considerably.
The strength of technical and non-technical controls offered by public cloud service providers like Azure, Google Cloud Platform and AWS is significantly higher than most on-premise implementations. Even if you compare the public cloud to large data center providers, the public cloud has more security features implemented lower in the technology stack by default, which are “invisible” to customers (if you consider the shared responsibility model). As a result, customers are required to manage more controls on data center implementations.
If you’re in control of your environment in a data center setting, yes, you can theoretically definitely make it more secure than anywhere else. However, seldom do companies do so. In fact, studies show that organizations rarely dedicate enough resources to do even 50% of what the public cloud service providers do in terms of security measures. Additionally, public providers are heavily certified – much more so than most customers or data center providers could ever achieve.
The major security risk of the public cloud lies in the fact that customers often believe once their workloads (or data) are in the cloud, they are secure – which is not true. Customers often forget that security controls are not “out of the box” in the public cloud, and instead are the customer’s responsibility as per the shared responsibility model. If this is not managed properly, it can result in major gaps and vulnerabilities, ready to be exploited by hackers. To put this into context: According to Gartner, by 2025, 99% of the cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault.
As its name implies, the public cloud is public. So, by its very nature, the public cloud is more exposed. In one sense, as the public cloud becomes home for big brands and companies, one can argue that these big brands are putting a target on the back of their cloud service provider. Yet, on the other hand, as service providers become a target, they’ve also evolved at an impressive pace. The threat of attacks, intrusion attempts and so on has spurred innovation to improve defense controls to the extent that it’s now hard to match the level of experience outside of a public cloud provider.
In conclusion, if you’re considering a move to the cloud and have questions about its security, you’re not alone. Although the cloud has proven to be the best option for many companies, it’s important to understand public cloud’s shared responsibility model and put in place a robust security plan before making the move. With those pieces in place, the cloud can offer a highly secure, resilient – and not to mention cost effective – environment that will benefit you today and over the long term.
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WatServ is an IT solutions provider that helps clients digitally transform their business through cloud technologies and services. Founded in 2006, WatServ specializes in providing hybrid and multi-cloud solutions and hosting complex, high-availability environments for enterprise-level applications. WatServ’s unique approach to planning, migrating and managing multi-cloud environments, plus premium 24x7x365 support, enables its global customers to focus on their core business. Relying on Microsoft and Google’s public clouds, in addition to its own private cloud, the company offers an ideal managed cloud environment engineered for security, reliability and performance. With offices in Canada and the United States, and with 1000’s of users connecting from around the world, WatServ is always on. For more information, please visit www.watserv.com.
WatServ is an affiliate of Brookfield Business Partners (BBU), a public company with majority ownership by Brookfield Asset Management Inc. and listed on the New York and Toronto Stock Exchange. More information about BBU is available at www.brookfield.com.
Microsoft published some interesting ideas on their Azure cloud adoption framework strategy guidance.
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Microsoft has rolled out new capabilities for Windows Virtual Desktop and the Azure portal integration, which enables easier deployment and management. It has also announced changes to Teams that facilitate better meetings and collaboration.
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Normally hosted in Seattle, the conference for developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) took place online this year. Bringing together about 5,000 participants, the 48-hour
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WatServ is an IT solutions provider that helps clients digitally transform their business through cloud technologies and services. Founded in 2006, WatServ specializes in providing hybrid and multi-cloud solutions and hosting complex, high-availability environments for enterprise-level applications. WatServ’s unique approach to planning, migrating and managing multi-cloud environments, plus premium 24x7x365 support, enables its global customers to focus on their core business. Relying on Microsoft and Google’s public clouds, in addition to its own private cloud, the company offers an ideal managed cloud environment engineered for security, reliability and performance. With offices in Canada and the United States, and with 1000’s of users connecting from around the world, WatServ is always on. For more information, please visit www.watserv.com.
WatServ is an affiliate of Brookfield Business Partners (BBU), a public company with majority ownership by Brookfield Asset Management Inc. and listed on the New York and Toronto Stock Exchange. More information about BBU is available at www.brookfield.com.
