Firms still lack faith in cloud security for their data

BLACK BOX CLOUD DEPLOYMENTS are being shunned by firms looking to backup data due to security concerns.

Cloud deployments, which have gained popularity in the past five years through the promise of accessing seemingly unlimited resources conjured up out of thin air, are being shunned for use as redundant storage due to fears about data security. Talking to The INQUIRER, Bob Roudebush, VP of marketing at Neverfail, said that "worries of having data in other datacentres is why cloud adoption is not higher, even for disaster recovery".

In recent months there have been several data breaches on cloud deployed services and Neverfail, which works with firms to harden operations against failure, said that customers are still wary of clouds. Roudebush said "the cloud sounds ideal for disaster recovery" but that one of the big issues with backing up data is to "ensure the security of data in more than one location".

The problem, according to Roudebush, is that not all cloud providers can guarantee the location of data. He said that there might be a case for small niche datacentres to emerge providing 'regional clouds', citing an example of a datacentre that services New York City clients by having its datacentre in the state of New York.

Storing data offsite is perhaps the first rule of disaster recovery. Curiously, when it comes to high availability and disaster recovery, it seems that Microsoft users are more concerned than those running Linux-based operating systems. When asked why Neverfail concentrates on hardening Windows-based operations, Roudebush said that he was surprised to find little demand for high availability optimisation on Linux.

Some might hastily put this down to a lack of Linux deployments but Roudebush categorically said this wasn't the case. Instead it was the type of applications, which he classed as "horizontally deployed" - meaning a daisy chain of applications dependent on each other - as the reason. Applications on Linux are deployed differently, according to Roudebush, and thus he doesn't expect to see firms having to shell out for disaster recovery and high availability optimisation soon.

Impressive as Roudebush's statements are about Linux not needing nearly as much effort as Windows to stand up to the rigors of high demand in the real world, he claims that companies are still cautious about cloud deployments, even as secondary backup sites for their data. It seems that some companies have put their faith in the cloud and been stung quite badly, while others are now learning that the hype might not match up with the reality. µ