In recent years, a lot of businesses from across diverse sectors and industries have moved their operations, either entirely or in part, to the cloud. It is apparent that those who haven’t moved their operations to the cloud so far will be doing so soon or have started planning for the migration. The cloud has become an attractive proposition for many because of the multiple benefits it offers to businesses. Some of the apparent and visible benefits of moving to the cloud are improved control, better visibility and enhanced scalability. However, not everything is hunky dory in this domain. There are some key challenges too that businesses have to deal with while making the move to the cloud and post migration.
There is this popular theory doing the rounds for long that by hosting application data on the cloud, businesses might possibly be at a larger risk of cyber-attacks. This fear is not entirely baseless and unfounded as there have been some instances in the past where hackers have been able to break into the data storage system and illegally access files and documents. Cloud-based networks are particularly more prone to cyber-attacks and have been the target of attackers who want to access data illegally.
However, hosting experts are of the opinion that such attacks can be prevented if the right cloud hosting service with the highest level of security and other features are chosen by organizations for their data management. Cloud services with antivirus, firewall, sandbox and other tools for dealing with a variety of threats and for monitoring traffic can help businesses make the transition to the cloud smoothly and successfully.
Listed below are the key benefits of choosing cloud-based security:
Helps Avoid Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks
DDoS attack is the bane of hosting solutions and can immense damage to businesses. In this type of attack, traffic is redirected from numerous sources to the website server that’s on the radar of the hacker. The high volume incoming traffic overwhelms the system making it incapable of responding to general and legitimate requests by genuine users of the website. In such instances, the website can be rendered inactive and unusable for long period of time – even for many days at times – resulting in major losses. To help avoid such problems, advanced cloud security solutions are activated to run scanning systems in real-time so that the attack sources can be identified. On detecting an incoming attack, website managers are alerted, the incoming traffic absorbed and distributed among various points of presence.
Provides Superior Protection Against Data Breaches
One of the key concerns for internet users as well as businesses is data breach. Reports show that billions of pages of online records were illegally stolen or compromised in 2016. This can be avoided by using high quality cloud security solutions that comes with various security protocols. Different controls can be used for enhancing security. Businesses can decide who should have access to critical data that have been placed in the cloud. These security solutions can also help identify steps taken by hackers to tamper data. In most instances, such solutions can even help in recovery of lost data.
Ensures Compliance with Data Storage and Usage Laws
Cloud security solutions from top service providers come with a range of report generating features and controls. They are provided to comply with various regulations and rules framed by bodies and government agencies. By complying with these rules, organizations can easily avoid problems associated with cloud computing. These rules and guidelines generally cover issues related to data storage and usage. It is recommended that you choose solutions that are capable of generating audit trails and help in detecting any attempt to tamper data.
Round the Clock Support Assured
By migrating to cloud-based solution, companies can enjoy support round the clock. Almost all top cloud security solutions providers have 24 hours live monitoring as one of their key features. They have built-in redundancies that can not only help in tracking downtimes but also provide copies of data that has been deemed as lost or are inaccessible.
Expenses Can Be Watched and Managed Better
It can cost companies quite a sum if they plan to buy data security solutions outsight and install them. For small and medium-sized companies, this can result in major expenses which might be beyond their budget. Such costs can be easily avoided if the security needs are outsourced to a third-party agency. Of course, hiring the services of an agency means paying a regular monthly fee but the cost of an annual subscription would be significantly less than what it would cost companies to install such an infrastructure in-house. Another key benefit of hiring cloud security solutions provider is that it would also save the cost of having to hire a dedicated security team.
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