Risk Management
All computing systems have benefits and risks and cloud computing is no different. As for the benefits of cloud computing, the biggest would be reduced investment and proportional costs.
Many companies would benefit financially by being able to scale back or eliminate any local computer equipment, software and ownership costs. By transitioning into the cloud, all computer equipment would be rented from the service provider. Not only do you have the benefit of eliminating your computer hardware, but you only have to pay (rent) for the cloud services when you are using them.
And that leads us into another benefit of cloud computing – scalability. Just like our company has extremely high demands for computer resources in the fourth quarter, we would pay for the added services during the peak times and then “turn it off” when business returned to normal operations.
When we lost a week of downtime back during the ransom ware attack, availability of our data would have been great. Cloud computing not only increases your availability, but also reliability with numerous amounts of servers holding your data.
Of course with the good comes the risks. First thing everyone asks about is security. Moving data into the cloud allows one more variable to get their fingers into the jar. You must feel comfortable that the service provider is going to have standards that are at or above the standards that you have currently.
Not only do you want increased security in the cloud, but the service provider should have a level of governance that meets your qualifications. If you share the service with other consumers, you need to know if your peer consumers do not have the level of security that you do and how does the service provider handle it.
Portability could also become an issue should you ever decide to change service providers. There could be an added cost in getting your data to conform to the new service providers standards.
Lastly, multi-regional regulatory and legal issues could become a concern. Since we have customers all over the world, we will need to be aware of which countries that our customers live in require special handling of their data. Also, should a legal search ever be needed, some countries have laws require that all data be released to them when asked.