Why we need security

As mentioned previously, we can see clear benefits of using cloud services that enable our business to focus on what brings us value (from conducting research in a pharmaceutical lab, to selling products on a retail site, and so on).

But what about security? And, specifically, cloud security?

Why should our organization focus on the overhead called information security (and, in the context of this book, cloud security)?

The cloud has changed the paradigm of organizations controlling their data on-premises (from HR data to customers' data) and investing money in maintaining data centers, servers, storage, network equipment, and the application tier.

Using public clouds has changed the way organizations look at information security (in the context of this book, cloud security).

The following are a few common examples of the difference between on-premises data solutions and the cloud:

Table 1.1 – Differences between on-premises data solutions and the cloud

Organizations are often unwilling to migrate to a public cloud for security reasons because the physical servers are located outside of the organization's direct control, and sometimes even outside their physical geography.

Here are a few questions often asked by organizations' management:

• Are my servers going to behave the same as if they were on-premises?
• How do I protect my servers outside my data center from a data breach?
• How do I know the cloud provider will not have access to my data?
• Do my employees have enough knowledge to work in new environments such as the public cloud?

Perhaps the most obvious question asked is – is the public cloud secure enough to store my data?

From my personal experience, the answer is yes.

By design, the hyper-scale cloud providers invest billions of dollars protecting their data centers, building secure services, investing in employee training, and locating security incidents and remediating them fast. This is all with much higher investment, attention, and expertise than most organizations can dedicate to protecting their local data centers.

The reason for this is simple – if a security breach happens to one of the hyper-scale cloud providers, their customers' trust will be breached, and the cloud providers will run out of business.

At the end of the day, cloud security enables our organization to achieve (among other things) the following:

• Decreased attack surface: Using central authentication, data encryption, DDoS protection services, and more
• Compliance with regulation: Deploying environments according to best practices
• Standardization and best practices: Enforcing security using automated tools and services

Reading this book will allow you to have a better understanding of various methods to secure your cloud environments – most of them using the cloud vendor's built-in services and capabilities.