While many IT analysts and businesses in general accept the potential and varied benefits of moving to a cloud model which are both persuasive and progressively achievable, they are very much cognizant of the challenges and potential risks of doing so.

Information technology decision-makers have genuine apprehension over issues such as security, reliability, performance and loss of control, not to mention the difficulty of selecting trusted and reliable cloud service providers with the required capabilities, experience and market stability to provide the necessary support for their needs. They must decide when and where to use cloud solutions. They also need to assess what steps they have to take to enable the progressive switch to the cloud and the modernization of their own IT environment as a part of that switch.

Cloud also means IT and the business on a larger scale need to work even more closely together to ensure cloud adoption is not counter-productive so that business departments can be seamlessly integrated into the process while IT takes care of related risks factors and service-level considerations.

While some cloud service providers may down-play such concerns, the challenges are very real and must be faced directly. The speed and precise direction of transfer will vary from sector to sector, and business to business depending on a number of variables.

The main issue businesses grapple with is security. The cloud model has been criticized by some for the greater ease in which the companies hosting the cloud services control, thus can monitor at will, lawfully or unlawfully, the communication and data stored between the user and the host company. Dr. Maurice McNaughton of the University of the West Indies’ Mona School of business believes that these concerns are nothing new. “The risks of cloud computing are typical of risks associated with any hosted solution,” insists Dr. McNaughton who has written extensively on the topic of Cloud Computing. “One of the perennial concerns has been the notion that the Patriot Act gives the U.S. government the right to access data stored on the cloud servers of American service providers,” he acknowledges.  However this he believes can be mitigated by the use of local cloud providers with data centre facilities located in Jamaica or the Caribbean.

The issue of cloud computing security is large enough that it may be delaying its adoption on a larger scale. Physical control of the servers and equipment are obviously more secure than having the equipment off site and under someone else’s control. Physical control and the ability to visually inspect the data links and access ports are necessary to ensure data links are not compromised. Security issues have been categorized into sensitive data access, data segregation, privacy, bug exploitation, recovery, accountability, malicious insiders, management console security and account control.  Among the solutions that have been offered to these security concerns include cryptography, particularly public key infrastructure (PKI), the use of multiple cloud providers, standardization of application progammes interface (APIs), and improving and legal support.

Additionally, as with privately purchased hardware, crackers posing as legitimate customers can purchase the services of cloud computing for nefarious purposes. This includes password cracking and launching attacks using the purchased services. In 2009, a banking trojan illegally used the popular Amazon service as a command and control channel that issued software updates and malicious instructions to PCs that were infected by the malware.

As with many tech advances, the benefits that exist will always certainly outweigh the potential risks. While those risks are very real and must be considered, the benefits of reduced costs, increase storage, flexibility and mobility among others, still make it a worthwhile venture for businesses everywhere.BM