Risk in the Cloud
Cloud is easy, fast, and anyone in your organization can create an account with just a credit card. In fact they’ve probably already done it. Analysts estimate that at least 35% of cloud spend is due to “Shadow IT,” which suggests that even if you don’t know of any public cloud usage in your organization, it’s almost certainly happening.
For CIO’s and IT leaders this means being exposed to new risks and vulnerabilities in the cloud that they may not even be aware of, but may be held responsible for. Here are four main types of risk:
The first order risk issues are financial and business continuity exposure for your company. Do you have visibility into what is being spent in the public cloud? Is it predictable? What if someone leaves virtual machines running and forgets to turn them off? How much financial exposure do you have?
Another question is, how was this particular cloud provider selected? Is it really the best cloud provider for your application and business needs? Is the app or data backed up? Also, is the architecture being used designed in a resilient fashion to ensure business continuity?
The plethora of compliance regulations out there, from securing customer data to financial risk management, means that your organization’s cloud usage could expose you to compliance and legal issues.
So, what should you do? A lock-down on public cloud usage is not the answer; it will only put your company at competitive disadvantage by removing agility. There is a reason your organization is using public cloud and that is because it is fast. In today’s competitive world, speed is critical.However, how do you maintain this speed, and still have the proper risk mitigation and control?
The Solution
The first step of gaining control is discovery of what your organization is doing in the public cloud. Using discovery and sync tools from Gravitant, you can determine which cloud assets are provisioned, how secure and resilient they are, and how much is being spent. Then you can use Gravitant’s cloudMatrix to provide governance and control over cloud activities while still allowing speed and agility for business users. Finally, you can run alternate sourcing scenarios to determine which cloud is best for your application and business needs. To learn more about the cloudMatrix solution for public download our presentation, “What Happens when Cloud Happens?”
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