Cloud Security: Part 1: The Cloud!

Aside from mobile computing, if there is anything that has shaped the world of computing today, it is cloud computing. While being independent concepts, and rather paradoxical concepts, both rely on each other to form the backbone of today's digital world. The paradox lies in the fact that while mobile computing distributes computing power and data into the hands of billions, cloud computing centralizes an immense amount of data and compute to large data centers. The idea behind this three-part series is to capture the importance of cloud security for enterprises and to unbundle some concepts that can help the readers comprehend this space. In part 1, let's begin with a general understanding of the cloud and how it intertwines with our digital lives.

Cloud: Foundational Concepts

The term cloud has become so ubiquitous that it doesn’t really need a formal definition, and I'm not even going to try! But the fact that, knowingly or unknowingly, it’s such an integral part of our personal and professional lives, it doesn’t hurt to revisit some foundational concepts in cloud computing. Here’s a quick run-down:

Virtualization: In my view, virtualization is like the genesis of cloud computing. Virtualization breaks the fabric of software from the underlying hardware. So enterprise applications that relied significantly on the hardware they ran on, can now be run on virtual machines. With virtualization, your application (email, database, ERP, CRM etc.) could be spread across physical servers all across the globe, without you, the user, having the slightest idea where the software is running!

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): The most commonly known type of the cloud, SaaS represents applications that most consumers use. The SaaS application that almost practically gave birth to the term SaaS is Salesforce. But now you have thousands of SaaS applications like Office365, G-Suite, Slack, etc. The beauty of SaaS applications is that as long as you have Internet and any computing device (laptop, smartphone, smart TV etc.), you can access the SaaS application anywhere, anytime!

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): IaaS is a representation of your data center. The big difference is, as opposed to taking months to build your data center, like SaaS, all you need is the Internet, and you can build your own data center in a matter of minutes! Even more beautiful is the fact that you can scale-up and scale-down your infrastructure (data center) based on varying needs in a matter of minutes. And last, but not least, you can practically close your whole data center in minutes too. Hence the term “as-a-Service”. The giants in the IaaS space include Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), and Google (Google Cloud).

Public Cloud: Whether SaaS or IaaS, public cloud is what’s available publicly. Sometimes, these applications are available free of charge (at least monetarily…but remember, nothing is ever free!). Examples include Gmail, Box or even YouTube. But most public cloud applications are available as subscriptions.

Private Cloud: Private clouds are more synonymous to old data centers, but built on modern cloud architectural principles. Private clouds are used primarily by enterprises that want to minimize their dependence on public clouds; that are more concerned about data privacy; or that want to manage their own infrastructure.

Hybrid Cloud: As the name suggests, a hybrid cloud is a mix of public and private cloud. Hybrid clouds are a reality for most of the large enterprises that are slowly transitioning their workloads from their own data centers to a public cloud. The complexity and cost of migrating old data centers to the cloud, privacy concerns and outright lack of faith in the cloud are some reasons why hybrid clouds will remain a reality for the foreseeable future.

Workload: A workload can mean many things depending on whom you’re speaking to. But for simplicity, you can consider a workload as a combination of software and data required to perform an operation. The term is often used to describe how companies are moving their computing capabilities from their on-premise data centers to the cloud. That could mean porting a small piece of code, or a full enterprise application (like SAP) from your data center to the cloud.

Multi-Cloud: Multi-cloud refers to the distribution of your cloud resources across multiple public or private clouds. This again, is a reality for most enterprises, big or small. Organizations are likely to use multi-cloud infrastructures to accommodate their varying needs; and also to minimize their reliance on a single cloud vendor.

two of the biggest benefits that cloud computing brings are agility and economies of scale

This is merely a small list of terms to know a bit about cloud, the value it brings and the digital security challenges that come with it. In case it isn’t already obvious, two of the biggest benefits that cloud computing brings are agility and economies of scale. Whether it’s spinning up a new digital business, or scaling up the existing IT infrastructure, cloud computing opens up a world of possibilities. But it would be na?ve to think that cloud adoption itself is the epitome of going digital. It is, at the end of the day a means to an end. This is why it’s important to weigh in on cloud computing in conjunction with other technology areas.

Cloud and Digital Transformation

What better place to start than digital transformation – every marketers dream and a near-divine revelation for every management consultant looking to bill hours! Digital transformation is a reflection of how entrenched our lives are with digital technologies. While theoretically, both cloud computing and digital transformation are independent realms; it is nearly impossible to conceive a modern transformation project without some element of cloud computing involved. At the end of the day, the promise of such projects relies heavily on cloud-enabled SaaS and IaaS capabilities in an agile and cost-efficient manner to transform the legacy processes into modernized digital ones.

Cloud and Mobile

If there’s any other technological domain that has disrupted our personal and professional lives as much as cloud computing, it has to be mobile computing (smartphones, feature phones, tablets, laptops etc.). Inherent to mobile computing is the connectivity fabric (WiFi, 5G, 4G, 3G etc.). Together, the cloud and mobile have literally given birth to an information age culture (and ‘mis’ information age culture) that will have a profound impact on generations to come. While mobile forms the ubiquitous layer of information consumption, the cloud continues to be the brain that feeds into this layer. I recall working with a mobile operator that transformed its customer service experience by taking the customer service center to its high-profile customers; or working with operators in Africa who leapfrogged into taking banking services to the unbanked. While mobile was the front-end of these innovations, they were all being powered by a private cloud at the back. Mobile and cloud will always go hand in hand; often driving user behaviors that seep in from the consumer realm to the enterprise realm.

Cloud, IoT and Edge

Computing comes in all shapes and sizes. The exponential growth of the Internet of Things is testament to that. But the true power of IoT cannot be harnessed in isolation. Cloud (public or private) is the layer that acts as a fabric between billions of endpoints. When working with OEMs or edge gateway providers, one realizes the significance of miniaturization and minimalistic footprint of the applications onboard those resource-constrained IoT devices. But what you also realize is that the stream of data coming from a single device is of little significance unless it is consolidated, processed and analyzed in the cloud. The cloud, again, acts like the brain behind a neural network of IoT and edge devices; extracting insight and intelligence from all the data collected from millions, if not billions, of devices.

Cloud, Big Data and AI

Speaking of data and neural networks, advances in the fields of big data and artificial intelligence owe a lot to cloud computing, and perhaps vice versa as we look into the future. If we’re heading towards producing roughly 500 exabyte (that’s 500 followed by 18 zeros) of data per day in the coming years, we definitely need a significant amount of computing power to process and analyze such data. This is why big data analytics and AI are already critical parts of cloud computing, and will grow on to become even more important as this data grows in magnitude (volume and velocity).

There are many other technological areas where cloud continues to act as a pillar, so an exhaustive list is unimaginable. An important area to look into is DevOps. Cloud computing has changed the way software is delivered and operated, again relying on the agility of the cloud. Another area that comes to mind 5G and SDN (software defined networking). Neither is solely dependent on cloud computing, but aspects of virtualization applied to both 5G and SDN make the fates of cloud computing intertwined with the new phenomena.

What’s important to learn from these examples or comparisons is that cloud has a symbiotic relationship with so many of these adjoining fields. This relationship makes it kind of a backbone for all these technological domains. Borrowing from one of my previous posts, the sole purpose of using new technologies is to implement new and unique experiences. Interestingly, I didn’t put cloud as a separate technological domain at the time in my illustration, yet it’s inherently there in all these domains. This poses both a great opportunity and a great threat moving forward. This post was just to give a sense of cloud computing, and how it’s woven into our lives through the capabilities it offers and the other technological domains it supports. The flip side of this coin is that as enterprises continue to rely more on the cloud, the threat landscape is also evolving at a feverish pace. As important as it is to understand how we can leverage the immense possibilities that cloud brings, we must be cognizant of how we should address the security challenges it brings. The cloud, after all, is here to stay!

Jump to Cloud Security: Part 2: Evolution of Network Security to Cloud-centric Security

DISCLAIMER: All the cool views presented in this post are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of my past or present employers.