| |August 201819CIOReviewfar overshadowed the disadvantages, making it a compelling argument. Let us see in detail, how Cloud compares to the traditional way of operating.Security and Compliance:Large enterprises and Cloud provid-ers invest heavily in security as threats are on an all-time high globally. The enormous scale and the lower opera-tional complexities make it econom-ic and easy for Cloud providers to strengthen security and comply with the latest regulations. Enterprises do not match Cloud players in getting all the mandated, industry-approved information security certifications such as ISO 27001, PCI DSS and Privacy Shield. Cloud companies keep up to all the latest data privacy laws such as Europe GDPR, Singa-pore's PDPA, Indian and Chinese data protection laws.It's Wise to leave it to the Experts:Enterprises care about cost, quality, speed and reliability in their prod-ucts, and so do their customers. In the course of doing their businesses, companies neither have enough fo-cus on security, not have the budgets for security. Also, it is a huge chal-lenge for companies to set up mul-tiple redundancies and backup sites for their data. Considering all the above, it would become immensely clear that Cloud companies, with their great scale of operations and obsession for providing top notch security to their enterprise custom-ers win over enterprises trying to manage security and back up all by themselves. With favourable econo-mies of scale, robust investments in redundancies and reliable back up operations, moving to the Cloud makes high sense. It is also important to know the risks enterprises involve themselves in, when choosing Cloud over man-aging their own data. Global outages is a major danger as Cloud thrives on the Internet and remote data centers that is at an eternal risk. Latency is also a major challenge as good appli-cation response speeds are crucial for good user experiences. Cloud com-panies have been addressing both these dangers convincingly, and the risks have reduced significantly over the years, with trends spiralling downward. Cloud companies have invested in redundancies to make service recoveries faster during out-ages, and increased bandwidth and speed has reduced latency greatly. The Issue of TrustEnterprises are often not okay with their data residing out of their con-trol on remote servers governed by opaque security practices, causing mistrust and reluctance to move to the Cloud. Ironically, most security threats are internal, which makes it equally tough to manage all data in-ternally. Governments also set regu-latory restrictions on Cloud storage locations, and demand visibility of information, international data transfers, embargoes and compliance with the latest information security standards. Cloud companies address all these by complying with all laws proactively. With governments too warming up to the inevitability of Cloud, and allowing enterprises the use of Cloud solutions, it will fall on enterprises to put in place effective security reviews and due diligence measures to ensure trust in their re-lationships with Cloud providers.The perception that Cloud is an alternative to on-premise data stor-age has changed drastically. It is therefore not prudent to do every-thing in-house, neither is it neces-sary. High security, low cost, infi-nite scalability, convenience, speed and interconnectedness have made Cloud a necessity, and not a pass-ing fad. The advantages of embrac-ing the Cloud thus far outweigh the disadvantages. With favourable economies of scale, robust investments in redundancies and reliable back up operations, moving to the Cloud makes high senseShailendra Singh
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