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MANAGED SERVICES private cloud


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Managing risk and governance in the private cloud


Security remains a key concern for IT and data professionals when entrusting corporate information to public, private or hybrid cloud service providers, says Ryan Rubin, director, Protiviti.


T


he benefits of cloud computing are now well understood. The ability to scale IT capabilities up and down according to changing requirements from the business and to pay for what you use are particularly appealing in a volatile economic environment.


However, security remains a key concern for IT and data professionals when entrusting corporate information to public, private or hybrid cloud service providers. One of the first decisions to make is which of these models to use. But should organisations always choose the private cloud as the most secure and easily managed platform? And how should they ensure that there is a strong governance programme in place to protect their data and choose an appropriate trusted service provider?


One way to look at this is as though cloud computing resources are like a hotel service. With the public cloud, you will always get a room with the same standard of fixtures and fittings, but it may not always


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be the same one. Although you can scale your resources up and down, there is a risk that a room you’ve been assigned has been used by someone else and that your privacy may be compromised.


With the private cloud, you have a dedicated set of rooms with resources and systems that are only ever used by your data. While this gives you a better chance of privacy, it is going to be more expensive – especially if you require some flexibility in the resources you plan to use.


However, compared to dedicated IT resources and data centres run in-house, public cloud is perceived to be more cost-effective and easier to build into ongoing budgets as a cost rather than capital expenditure. The cloud service provider is responsible for security management, disaster recovery and back-up processes, removing the need for large global companies in particular to build expensive replicated data centres around the world. However, there may be


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