What are the differences between cloud-based and on-premises IT risk mitigation strategies?

IT risk mitigation is similar to setting up a secure ALARM SYSTEM in your home. You have built your organization with time, money and lots of effort. To safeguard your efforts, organizations must invest in appropriate risk mitigation efforts. In my experience, most of the big organizations that I've worked with were on budgets that were cut-to-cut as far was risk management was concerned. Budgets were never cut for Director's travel, Sales, etc. but whenever we proposed risk management strategies the focus used to be on keeping the costs to the minimum. It's not like no one knows the cost of risk! In my experience, EFFECTIVE risk mitigation is when it is a part of the organization's DNA and is always welcome to check possible negatives.

Cloud-based IT risk mitigation offers scalability and cost-efficiency, enabling organizations to adapt to changing needs while reducing operational expenses. It enhances security by leveraging advanced threat detection and response tools, providing real-time monitoring, and enabling rapid updates to protect against emerging threats. Additionally, cloud-based solutions offer improved data recovery and business continuity options, reducing downtime and minimizing the impact of potential risks

A challenge that I have recently faced in my organization was "Resistance to Change" While cloud-based IT risk management solutions have limitations, very often the pros outweigh the cons. It takes a buy in from almost all department heads to migrate data and systems to the cloud, and that is where employees who are not visionaries will object. These people exist in every organization around the world. They will question every change that requires extra effort. A solution that worked for me was Training folks on the advantages and showing them that it's not as difficult as they think it is. With clear direction and implementation, this challenge can be mitigated and rolled out within planned timelines.

I agree there are several benefits to on-site IT risk mitigation that work for organizations which are small/ local. The top two advantages I've experienced are Flexibility to customize quickly and Data Availability. One time, a cloud-based IT risk mitigation program took 3 years to deploy. While several critical factors changed during that time, it was difficult to incorporate those changes. This is where on-premises solutions work better. We quickly mitigated the risks identified by putting in place a small portion of data under on-premises mitigation watch. This worked really well as we had the best of both worlds. This is a great solution, if possible, in an organization. However, it is crucial to study the data involved to best decide.

I don't think, differences between On prime IT Risk and Cloud Infrastructure based IT Risk has been called out clearly in this article. We need to emphasize the additional priorities while doing Cloud Infrastructure risk assessments in comparison to On-premises IT Risk assessment. In that way, the shared responsibility structure of cloud infrastructure plays a vital role to consider. On second priority, we have Network connectivity of Cloud Infrastructure though different interfaces and virtual networks.