In all the critical categories, the cloud continues to beat out on-premise alternatives. Despite this, many remain skeptical, citing security of the cloud infrastructure. For the few of you out there who are still wrestling with the idea of adopting the cloud, in May of 2010, AberdeenGroup released a white paper which should allay many doubts and concerns about security in the cloud.
When services, such as SaaS(Software as a Service), IaaS(Infrastructure as a Service), and PaaS(Platform as a Service), are offered in the cloud, countless questions arise regarding ownership of applications, networks, storage, hosts, and data. Does the company have ownership? Does the service provider have ownership? To clarify, the service provider has full ownership over the infrastructure for networks, storage, and hosts. The service provider may also assume full or partial ownership over the application infrastructure. As for the data, the company always has ownership, but not direct control. This loss of direct control over data instills uncertainty in consumers about the integrity and security of their sensitive information. However, the results of Aberdeen's 12 month analysis between on-premise and cloud-based archiving security strongly favored Cloud-based Archiving.
Aberdeen's analysis of 36 companies over a 12 month period, on-premise suffered from; 26 Malware infections, 9 Website compromises, 11 Data Loss/Data Exposure incidents, 11 security related downtime incidents, and 30 audit deficiencies.
Over the same twelve month period, the sample group of 22 Organizations that used Cloud-based services logged; 11 Malware infections(Cloud Advantage 58%), 2 Website Compromises(Cloud Advantage 78%), 6 Data Loss/Data Exposure(Cloud Advantage 45%), 6 Security-Related Downtime incidents(Cloud Advantage 45%), and 2 Audit Deficiencies(Cloud Advantage 93%).
Having had 5 fewer Data loss incidents, at $640,000 per incident, translates into $3 million in cost avoidance. 28 fewer Audit Deficiencies, at $7,000 per incident, translates into $200,000 in annual cost savings. These are just a few of the pro-cloud findings in the 2010 Aberdeen White Paper, Web Security in the Cloud: More Secure!, Compliant! Less Expensive!
Based on these numbers, cloud-based computing and archiving is; less expensive, more compliant, more reliable, easier to maintain, and now more secure. It seems as though it is becoming more difficult to find reasons not to adopt a cloud-based archiving solution.
Full of webinars, research reports, magazine articles, and video clips to educate you on how to keep your business safe when adopting the cloud.