In 2017, RightScale conducted a survey which showed that 79% of companies were using cloud services. Of those, 41% were using public cloud and 38% chose private cloud. Each year, the number of public cloud users continues to grow.
Public cloud services can offer significant value to companies that use them, and in many cases, public cloud providers can secure data better than companies that manage their own on-premises infrastructure.
However, if you are considering using a public cloud, it is important to understand the potential risks involved, as well as the steps that can be taken to mitigate those risks should issues arise.
Limited Control in Public Cloud
Public cloud limits user control. A public cloud environment is multi-tenant, meaning a single environment serves multiple customers. Because of this shared environment, public cloud customers are not given access to the hypervisor. This lack of access prevents customers from modifying the environment and results in limited control.
Public cloud providers own the hardware and software, allowing them to make changes—both minor and major—at their discretion without consulting customers. They also determine authentication, authorization, access control processes, and software configurations.
As a customer, your company has no control over these aspects or the associated procedures. If your company has strict security policies, it may be difficult to ensure those policies are fully enforced when using a public cloud.
Having Backup Copies
Some companies believe they are fully protected simply by storing files in the public cloud, even if they already have backups or a cyber disaster recovery plan. However, using a public cloud alone does not constitute disaster recovery, nor is it a sufficient backup method.
Many public cloud providers claim to have built redundancy into their infrastructure. Nevertheless, public cloud outages lasting several hours have still occurred.
Maintaining backups and a disaster recovery plan remains essential to ensure continued access to your data. This is especially important if your public cloud service becomes unavailable or if errors result in data loss.
In 2011, Amazon lost some customer data. In 2015, Google also experienced customer data loss. Incidents like these can happen and have affected even major companies.
Relying solely on public cloud storage is risky. Make sure your company has alternative backup methods and a disaster recovery plan to minimize potential impact.
Security in Public Cloud
As explained earlier, public cloud operates in a multi-tenant environment. This inherently introduces security threats, as a single vulnerability in the infrastructure can expose the entire environment.
Multi-tenancy exploitation could allow one tenant or a hacker to view other tenants’ data or potentially track their identities. Due to public cloud security vulnerabilities, companies must comply with existing regulations to minimize the negative impact of cloud usage.
Public cloud also limits your control, making it more difficult to enforce security policies once you are operating within a public cloud environment. These limitations include authorization, authentication, and access control, all of which increase your company’s security risks.
Data Ownership
Many people are unaware that public cloud providers may technically own customer data. The best practice is to carefully read the Service Level Agreement (SLA) and ensure that your company retains ownership of the data it stores.
Many cloud service providers, including large ones, include clauses in their contracts stating that customer data belongs to them. This protects them legally and may also allow them to generate additional revenue through data usage.
That said, cloud providers generally commit to maintaining data confidentiality. If your company uses public cloud services, several measures can help protect data, such as establishing strong SLA agreements, storing only non-confidential data in the public cloud, and choosing providers that allow you to retain data ownership.
Public Cloud Availability Risks
As widely known, no service can guarantee 100% uptime. In addition to common network failures and ISP downtime, there is also the risk of losing access to services when a cloud provider experiences outages.
Redundancy is no longer under the control of your internal IT team, meaning users must rely on the vendor to perform regular backups to prevent data loss. However, emergency plans are often unclear and may not explicitly define who is responsible in the event of service disruption or failure.
Companies planning to migrate data to public cloud or hybrid cloud environments must first ensure that the cloud provider offers disaster recovery solutions.
Smaller cloud vendors that lack sufficient data centers may rely on third-party providers with whom you have no direct contractual agreement. Therefore, contracts should clearly define accountability in the event of service disruption.
Despite these risks, it cannot be denied that public cloud offers numerous benefits for businesses. At Indonesian Cloud, you can choose from several public cloud providers such as Alibaba Cloud, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, Huawei Cloud, and AWS. You can consult with us to align the solution with your company’s needs.
That concludes our explanation. If you would like to read more technology-related articles or obtain further information about Indonesian Cloud products, please visit Indonesiancloud.com and our VPS website cloudhostingaja.com. See you in our next article.