Vendors and service providers have often cited concerns about information security as a major obstacle to cloud adoption in South Africa. Local organisations - especially the larger and more conservative ones - are hesitant to entrust someone else with protecting and managing their data, or so the conventional wisdom goes.
Many of our customers are migrating to a usage-based model for security.
Gregory Anderson, country manager, Trend Micro
"Organisations see using the cloud as losing control of their data," says EOH Cloud Services director Richard Vester. But that picture is starting to change as enterprises begin to take a more nuanced view of what it means to move to the cloud, and as they grapple with a range of new security challenges in a more connected and heavily regulated environment.
With organisations facing a growing list of regulations and laws, such as the Payment Card Industry standard and the Protection of Personal Information Act, many are now looking towards hosting applications and data in a service provider's secure environment to better protect their data, says Sean Nourse, executive for connectivity at Internet Solutions.
Operational cost
In addition, many others are looking towards cloud-based security solutions to secure endpoints and other IT infrastructure at a more affordable cost. "Many of our customers are migrating to a usage-based model for security," says Gregory Anderson, country manager at Trend Micro. This allows them to turn endpoint security into a predictable operational cost rather than having their capex costs balloon when they need to buy new software licences. It also helps them to combat the high cost and relative scarcity of information security skills.
Another potential cloud service that could help IT managers take control of security is managing the user's desktop as a service, says Vester. All of the data resides in a secure data centre rather than on a notebook or mobile device that could be lost or stolen.
In addition, companies are beginning to accept that a shift to the cloud doesn't need to mean handing over all their data to a service provider. Companies are embracing the hybrid model, keeping more mission-critical data hosted in their own private clouds, while using public clouds for less sensitive data, says Vester.
By working together on areas such as access controls as well as management of high-risk data, cloud providers and their customers can keep the information secure, he adds. With the right management tools, companies can manage private and public clouds in a manner that gives them better visibility into who is using data and applications, how they are consuming them and where.
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